In the early 1990s, Richie Innocent made the long journey from his home in St. Elizabeth parish to the resort town of Ocho Rios, to perform in a talent contest promoted by music producer Courtney Cole.<\/p>\n
Back then, he was a deejay known as Innocent. His persistence impressed Cole, whose Roof International label was hot at the time, producing hit songs by acts like Garnet Silk and Jigsy King.<\/p>\n
It was Cole who produced \u2018Whooe Whoo\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, his first song, which was released in 1995 \u2014 30 years ago. While he plans to celebrate that milestone with a show in St. Elizabeth next year, Richie Innocent is grateful for an enduring career.<\/p>\n \u201cThe longevity in the music industry has been a beautiful and also difficult journey for me and I have gone through many phases that have taken me through different emotions, especially when I needed an opportunity to showcase my talent and needed a break,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I have always stated that I am here to be established like the Earth, and I was here to excel with excellence on the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n Richie Innocent had a change of moniker 15 years ago when his sound, and songs, took a more conscious tone. Those songs include the hard-hitting \u2018Drugs fi Gun\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, \u2018Where Are the Warriors\u2019<\/em><\/strong> and \u2018The Passover\u2019<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 He co-produced the latter, his latest song, with Marlon Wright.<\/p>\n In September, Richie Innocent staged the second \u2018Poetry: Echoes of Expression\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, an event featuring spoken word artists. At the inaugural event in 2024, he launched \u2018Perseverance\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, his first book of poems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the early 1990s, Richie Innocent made the long journey from his home in St. Elizabeth parish to the resort town of Ocho Rios, to perform in a talent contest promoted by music producer Courtney Cole. Back then, he was a deejay known as Innocent. His persistence impressed Cole, whose Roof International label was hot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11827,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11826\/revisions\/11827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}