Likkle Jordee ADD

Likkle Jordee Interview - Style And Passion from Hawaii

01/31/2025 by Gardy Stein

Island reggae of a different kind: Jordan Jayce Ramirez aka Likkle Jordee is a singer who hails from O’ahu, one of the eight main islands of the Hawaii archipelago. He discovered the Jamaican offbeat in his early teens, meeting the right people at the right time to nurture his natural talent for singing and composing. With Style And Passion, he has just released his debut album, involving producers Pana and Jahtomic as well as two exciting features.

In his first Reggaeville interview ever, the artist talks about his humble beginnings, the people he met on the way, and how everything just fell into place while working on his music. Along the way, we also learn that ukuleles are not an exotic cliché, but an integral part of Hawaiian culture, and that small presents can sometimes spark big careers:

Greetings Jordan! Where do I catch you?

I’m just in my car because it's too loud right now. There's a storm that's passing through and it's raining hard, you can hear it all the way. So I came here, it’s more… compressed.

Okay, but you’re in Hawaii, right? Maybe that's a good starting point. How was it like growing up there? And how did you get in touch with reggae music?

I grew up around my stepmom, her family played in a local band. I would always be surrounded by that. I got curious about live performance, live music and just music in general. And soon after, I just developed a love and appreciation for it over here when I was around 13 years old. You know, we have Steel Pulse, Don Carlos on the radio, we have Kotch… those were the only names at the time, and Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown, Bob Marley, but there wasn't so much. I didn't explore things till later on, but that's kind of where it started, because it was mixed with a lot of the island reggae that already existed here in the local scene.

And then I picked up a ukulele, over here it's like part of our culture, you know? Ukulele is a must have! Me and my cousins, we would always be… over here, we call it ‘Kanikapila’, that's a phrase for, like, a jam session. That's something we would always do, and I kind of took it a little more seriously, you know, as I grew more of an appreciation for it and developed a style. From there, I just kind of grew with it. And then fast forward to a little after I graduated, I think I was 18, I was just getting out of high school. My stepmom gifted me my first studio microphone. At that time, we had a local band here called Ooklah The Mok and I was very inspired by them. I tried to develop my sound based off of what they were making at the time. And so, from there, I found my tone, my style developed because I would literally sing along to their music and try to sound like them. That's the crazy part, because I never really had any singing lessons, I never took any extracurricular activities to learn music. It was just like the love of it, you know?

Ooklah The Mok, he's a big reggae collector, and at the time, he was showcasing a lot of his collection. And I was introduced to a lot of what we would call rarities, that's how I discovered artists like Billy Boyo and Little Harry and Junjo Lawes, all of those dancehall artists back in the ‘80s. From there, I just started taking instrumentals and versions from YouTube, and I would take it to GarageBand and just freestyle over it with that studio mic. Then I would post the tracks on SoundCloud and from there, an artist called Tooly Ranks or Ranking Tooly, he has two different artist names that he goes by, he discovered me and we formed a group called Digikal Youth. I was probably like 21 at the time, very young in the scene and just really hungry, and we were really inspired by the youth men in the dance, you know, the DJs at the time. Musical Youth was one of those, a band that we would hear a lot locally here in Hawaii. Pass The Dutchie would always be on the radio, we grew up listening to that, so Digikal Youth was inspired by them. Also because we were linking through the internet, bouncing back and forth, trading song ideas, song writing ideas and concepts, and making it happen. We released some underground things at that time, and then Eli Mac discovered me. She was a good friend of my uncle's, and he would see all the Digikal Youth stuff, I would show him all the things, all the works I was doing. And he would show her my works, and she got curious, and then she put me on her album in 2016, called Tricky One EP with a song called Nighttime Session. We had that single together, and from there, my current producer discovered me, and, fast forward to 2019, we created my first EP, Brand New. Since then, it's been releasing singles, trying to figure out my place in the scene.

What's the producer's name?

His name is Pana. So, all of that, you know, from that first EP, I went on tour. My first tour was with Through The Roots, they’re from San Diego, California. And then the following year I went on tour with J Boog. I was direct support for him for about 20 shows. And then late 2023 going into 2024, I did a winter tour with Hirie and Soja. And then I came back home and created half of Style And Passion, then half of it was already written, I had it in the vaults.

Ok, cool! Before we talk a bit more about your new album Style And Passion, let's go back to the scene in Hawaii. You mentioned that reggae plays a lot on the radio there, can you tell us some more? Like, which standing does reggae have? What's the community like? Do you have regular dances?

You know, I feel like it could be more. There is potential, but… how do I say this? I wish there were more dances. There is not so much, it's more of an island vibe, they call it Jawai'ian, and I think that's where I separate myself from everybody else. You know, reggae music nowadays, you hear Chronixx, Kabaka, Protoje, Mortimer, you hear all of them breaking genre barriers, where it's not just reggae anymore. It's still reggae, but it's evolving, the sound, the production, it evolved, right? So, I don't think our scene here is there yet. We have our own scene here, which is why it's very important for me to really capitalize on what I represent, what my vision is as an artist, how I represent where I'm from. There's a handful of us that are very inspired by Jamaica, by the UK, by Europe, the Europe scene. We just see the love and passion for that and we wish it was like that, honestly. When you ask about how's the scene here, there's a lot of us who talk about these topics, because it's important to us to see reggae music grow here. And for more people to be aware of what reggae music means to us and to the world, because it's bigger than an island. There's a message for everybody, there's a song for everybody, for any situation, good or bad. At the end of it, reggae music just uplifts, the message in it is very important. We like that roots, the deep roots sound. There’s the obvious ones that we've heard on the mainstream, Night Nurse, Stranger In Town, Young Girl, but it goes deeper than that.

Okay. You mentioned other artists from Hawaii, do you know each other well? Like, Mike Love maybe?

Absolutely! Mike Love is the bredda! He falls into that, too, trying to make his own path, he's on the battlefield with us, you know what I mean? Mike Love, who else, Hirie, Eli Mac, J Boog obviously…

Speaking about the album, you already mentioned when you got started. How did you link up with the producers, Pana and Jahtomic?

As I mentioned earlier, I linked with him and connected with him through being on Eli Mac's album. He discovered me from there, and he just wanted to experiment with the sound and come out with something different. That's how we linked, through that connection right there. And Jahtomic, he has been with me since Digikal Youth days, he was the producer for our little collective at that time. So, me linking with Pana, it's coming full circle and it was time for us to collaborate on this album. The last one was six tracks, and we wanted to go for something more. It's been a couple of years now that I've released anything, from 2019 till now, so we just really wanted to give the fans something more. That's how I linked up with both of them, it was just real organic, aligning on the same wavelength.

Did they send you tracks that you could check out and choose from? Or did you tell them, “I want a funk track, I want a Hip Hop track...” How did you work?

Usually, how I work is that I songwrite just by freestyling. Sometimes I get ideas of cadences and melodies, I record them in my voice memo and just tuck it away and come back to it later. That's how they usually work with me, they'll send me the rhythms and I touch them as inspiration comes.

Was it a conscious decision to reach the stylistic variety you have on the album? I mean, you have some songs which are more roots reggae, of course, but then you have It’s Electric, which is more funky, disco style, and the last one goes into Hip Hop…

Absolutely! It definitely was a conscious decision, because, like I was saying, I’m trying to make my mark here in Hawaii and also represent the best way I can, to show the world that there is serious artists in the reggae market that know, a ‘who feels it, knows it’ kind of thing. I want to give the fans a variety because it's been a long time since I released something. It's not that I felt like, ‘Oh, we just gotta give it to them’, it's like, they deserve it. I think a lot of my fans know what I'm capable of when it comes to diversity and style. I just really wanted to showcase than I can still sound like this on a boom bap beat, or I can still sound like this on a, like you said, funky electronic dance beat, which is really inspired, too, by the digi sound, that whole Sly Dunbar snare, you know?

That's what I find amazing on your album, that you really relate to the Jamaican roots. Like, right in the beginning you can hear it in the intro, and also in the last song, Pop No Style, it's a quote of the classic Uptown Top Ranking. Was that something that came natural to you or did you really study the Jamaican roots?

Oh yes, absolutely! Tooly Ranks, I give him credit, he was literally my teacher. He fed me music, saying, “Hey, check these out!” and he would give me a big batch. I was really like, 'Wow, I know of these, but I never heard of these.' There's so much unique styles that came out of Jamaica and Europe in the ‘80s. Of course, we didn't have the technology and the access like we have now, where we can just go on YouTube and look for ‘80s reggae, and it'll give you that. We had no clue that that existed! So it was just amazing to me to find that and be like, 'Wow, this is treasure!' Styles like Horace Andy and them, I really valued that. There's just so many underground names that really stuck out to me, and I just wanted to pay homage to it, because at the end of the day, I nerd on music in general.

Next to the to the stylistic variety that we hear, you also touch on a lot of subjects. How's your songwriting going in general, do you say, ‘Okay, today I want to write a song about love or about upliftment’? How how do you find your themes?

For sure, that's one of the ways that I approach it. Let's say I'm having a great day or I'm having a time of reflection and I have a thought, I'll jot it down, and that's how the song will develop. And then sometimes, it really depends on the rhythm, the chords give me a mood. So, I usually just let my everyday life, the experiences I have, whether it's quick transactions with people or deep, intimate conversations, those will usually feed my inspiration. And then sometimes, if it's like a fun rhythm or whatever, I'll just freestyle. So, yeah, I try to dabble between them both, so it's just not just one way. I try to keep the creative constantly going. I've been into filmography, photography, and just art in general, because I try to explore different arts to keep my inspiration and creativity fresh.

Nice! Let's talk about the features on the album. I was surprised to see Mellow Mood, they are from Italy, which is far away from you. How did you connect with them?

It's crazy, because maybe a year and a half ago, Richie Campbell and Forelock started following me, and for me, this was insane, I mean… Richie Campbell?! So, we started talking, and what happened was, Forelock was showing Richie Campbell, and he was showing the Mellow Mood boys my stuff. They would always show me love, maybe I would post something and they really liked it, they would drop the fire emojis on my story, and so we were just like being organic, being real, talking and thanking them for the love. And from there it was just like, ‘Bredda, we gotta work soon!’. So, when this rhythm came about, I was like, 'This is my topic for this, I haven't been around for a long time', and when I think about their energy prior to this, when I watched them live, Mellow Mood matches this energy. I just love their energy, they're leaders, and the feel of that song really gave me leadership vibes. So, yeah, that's how that came about. Lion Order!

I think that might be my favorite, it opens the album in a nice vibe, really. Then, the other feature is Edley Shine. He has Jamaican roots, but is more on the Hip Hop side of things. How did you link up with him?

That is a pretty crazy story, too, because here in the islands, another thing we would always hear on the radio is Born Jamericans. And back in 2020, I released a freestyle called Incoming. It's been on rotation on various platforms, so he found my song on Pandora and he reached out via Instagram, and from there we traded numbers via WhatsApp. Basically, he wanted me to do a collaboration with him. I had this song with the open verse, and I was like, 'This is Hip Hop vibes!' I've been waiting about a year to find the right feature, and I was like, ‘This is the perfect guy!’ He broke boundaries in the ‘90s, developing that boom bap reggae sound, right? So I was like, he's the perfect guy for that. For me, as long as you keep forwarding and moving and keeping everything nice, it's like the universe... things will align and you attract. That's what happened, I never reached out to them, it was just like they found me kind of thing. It's crazy how it worked out!

Beautiful. I know it's always hard for artists to say, but do you have a favorite on the album?

My favorite on the album would be… maybe Upfull. Like I was saying, 2019 was my last EP, and, from that time till now, I feel like I went through a season that was very necessary for me to go through to really figure out what is my purpose in this. Upfull came about when I just came back from tour, and how the lyrics came about was because I felt like I did take things for granted in the beginning of my journey, and sometimes some people might not align with our vision. All of those things happening at one time is overwhelming as a human, right. And so Upfull was a way of taking your own advice.

**The second song, INTL, is that something that you wish for the future, that your music goes international?**

Kind of and not kind of (laughs). It's also just paying homage to Barry Reid, that's an old tune from the ‘80s that I'm a big fan of, it’s called Reggae Gone International. The simplicity of the style, it just really interests me, that's what I love. So, it was half paying homage and just also being confident in my works.

Have you been to Jamaica?

Not yet, but I would love to. I've a lot of links over the years, with iotosh and Yaadcore a few years back, and they're always telling me, “We need to come get you out here!”, so hopefully one day soon.

What's up next? Do you plan a release party? Are there any live shows in in the next weeks or months?

Last week I had private album listening party, that was just for close family, friends and industry people, you know, other artists, other producers. But this coming Saturday is my official album release party. And then I'll be doing another show next week. I just really try to get as much as promotion as I can on my album. You know, because we live on an island, there's nothing farther than an hour away, it's not that bad, but people tend to still complain. So my thing was, I'm going to release my album and I'm going to promote it in different regions of the island, just to meet them halfway. And then hopefully later on this year, during spring break, I’m thinking about doing a little California tour.

Okay, cool. And do you have a management team or do you do this all by yourself?

I am fully independent! I tend to keep it this way for a while, I love it.

And about the visuals, you said that you dabble with photography and filming as well, did you do the visuals for Spotify and stuff yourself?

Some of it is coming from my creative director who helped me with the single cover arts, but then the album cover art is fully me, I designed that. And then, some of the recent content that I've been doing, like in the past week or so, has all been filmed by me. You know, nowadays the whole content thing is so important, and as far as marketing goes, it prolongs or breathes new life into your music. So yeah, I don't want to wait for anybody, I'm independent now, and, by all means, I love it! It’s just like investing in myself, right?

Great. Well, I'm through with my questions. Maybe you want to add anything, send a message out there?

Anything you do, just do it 110%! Do it all the way and do it how you want to do it. That's been my biggest thing, just keep forward, never look back. I just like to also say, mahalo to my supporters, mahalo to you guys for having me, it's an honor to be here! It's been a long way coming to be here, talking with you right now. Mahalo!