Beres Hammond

He might be a reggae legend, but Beres Hammond enjoys the quiet life. Beres Hammond is a pretty low-keyed guy. In fact, up until this point, The Voice's Davina Morris had been given the impression that the reggae veteran didn't do interviews.

"No man," laughed Hammond. 'Ah lie dem a tell!'

You'd be forgiven for thinking that a man, who's made a career out of romantic hits such as There For You and One Dance, would be somewhat of a real-life Casanova, hitting all the hot spots to woo women at every given opportunity. Apparently not.

"Boy. My day-to-day life is boring," Hammond reveals. "Every day, I just look forward to being in the studio. So the only light moments I have are when other musicians come around and we talk all kinds of garbage! If you were a fly on the wall during some of our conversations, you'd probably think 'dem really talk about all that foolishness'?

"Sometimes we might talk about world politics and I can get a little deep into that, because that concerns me. But other than that, I'm very boring."

One wonders what a seemingly 'traditional' artiste like Hammond makes of today's younger reggae exports.

"In general, there are many young talents that I love. I would say thumbs up to a good 90 per cent of the new reggae talents. I'm proud of the progress that the music has made," he said. One artistes that Hammond has championed is reggae star Jah Cure. Often regarded as Jah Cure's mentor, Hammond gave him his first break when he produced the song King of the Jungle, a collaboration between Jah Cure and Sizzla.

Controversy

Of course, what followed for Jah Cure was a string of controversy when in 1998 he was jailed for rape. Throughout his sentence Jah Cure maintained his innocence and he went on to earn notoriety, with many protesting that he was wrongly imprisoned.

Though he was released from prison last year the controversy still shadows him. Is Hammond still a Jah Cure fan?

"Yeah man," he says.

Does he think Jah Cure can ever put the past behind him?

"You know, I really don't know how to answer that. I'm not a very good judge when it comes to that kind of thing. But I hope he's able to put it all behind him. All I know is that he's one hell of a talent."

Back to his own career and Hammond considers what drew him to make mostly love songs. "Perhaps it's because my family consists of mostly women," he laughs. "My mother raised seven girls. And my father. I can't even count the number of girls there are on his side! So I've always been surrounded by women. And as a kid growing up, listening to the old '50s and '60s music, a lot of it was love songs. So I got attached to melodies and love themes from an early age."

Stay true to your heart

Does he have any advice to the younger artistes on how to achieve longevity?

"I make sure that what I sing isn't something I'll look back on later down the line and say 'I really shouldn't have sung that'.

"There's no money you could pay me to get me to sing what I don't wanna sing. So, I would say, stay true to your heart. Avoid the type of utterances that may come back to haunt you."

Beres Hammond's A Moment in Time is out now on VP Records.