{"id":11924,"date":"2026-01-09T10:21:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T10:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=11924"},"modified":"2026-01-09T10:21:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T10:21:28","slug":"kenne-blessin-shows-love-for-nikita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/?p=11924","title":{"rendered":"Kenne Blessin Shows Love for Nikita"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An international hit when released in 1985, <strong><em>\u2018Nikita\u2019<\/em><\/strong> by Elton John got a lot of love in Jamaica where the song and its video enjoyed daily rotation. It was not until he became an adult that the ballad resonated with Kenne Blessin.<\/p>\n<p>He recalled listening to the song on Jamaican radio and watching the video which shows John toasting a Russian beauty, the object of his desire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember the video; it was like a Moscow video. And I said, \u2018let me do this in reggae because I never heard anyone do it in reggae\u2019. My version is from a different soul but with the same element,\u201d said Kenne Blessin, who is based in Atlanta.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to recording it, he performed <strong><em>\u2018Nikita\u2019<\/em><\/strong> and Simply Red\u2019s <strong><em>\u2018Holding Back the Years\u2019<\/em><\/strong> as part of his live set. They are popular with his fans, many of which can be found in Atlanta, Alabama and Florida where there is a market for easy-listening reggae.<\/p>\n<p>The self-produced <strong><em>\u2018Nikita\u2019<\/em><\/strong> completes a busy year for Kenne Blessin, who is from St. Thomas parish in eastern Jamaica. February saw the release of <strong><em>\u2018Caught My Attention\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, his second album while in September, he co-produced the <strong><em>\u2018Blue Flame Riddim\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, a four-song EP with songs by himself, Anthony Malvo, Delly Ranx and Antiguan Fucha Kid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An international hit when released in 1985, \u2018Nikita\u2019 by Elton John got a lot of love in Jamaica where the song and its video enjoyed daily rotation. It was not until he became an adult that the ballad resonated with Kenne Blessin. He recalled listening to the song on Jamaican radio and watching the video [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11924","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\/11924","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=11924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11925,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924\/revisions\/11925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}