“Koffee” is the Grammy winner’s first release in two years
Reggae and dancehall maven Koffee has returned with a bold new song she named after herself. “Somebody please remind these niggas, this is my industry,” she spits on “Koffee,” her first solo single since 2022 and release since appearing on Sam Smith’s “Gimme” with Jessie Reyez. “Koffee with a K, some call me Mikayla,” she notes on this redeclaration of who she is, pointing to her birth name, Mikayla Victoria Simpson.
The single comes with music video directed by Joshua Valle (Asake’s “Active,” Lil Baby’s “Heyy”). “Koffee” was produced by GuiltyBeatz, (“Move” by Beyoncè, “Love Me Jeje” by Tems), who gave Koffee a canvas of simple percussion, groovy bass, and rich horns to float on. Koffee’s always been a skilled sing-jay, evoking the flows of some of dancehall’s best deejays and hip-hop’s best rappers, but she’s back with more bite here, owning the scale of her impact and accomplishments. She proclaims herself, “the baddest thing out of Jamaica” and hints at no longer playing humble, saying, “Weh a mash up dem head, I’m tryna be a better me/Not the way you remember me/I left that in the cemetery/That side of me is dead/ I said what I said.”
In 2020, Koffee became the youngest person and first woman to win the Grammy for Best Reggae Album for her debut EP, Rapture, featuring the celebratory smash “Toast.” She dropped her first full-length album, Gifted, in 2022. In a four-star review, Rolling Stone called the album “a portrait of a brilliant young artist keenly aware of the miracles that lift her up,” and later named it one of the best albums of the year.
