Baggage clerk targets Brinks load of musical success

His love of music was something that showed itself between the ages of five and seven.

"You know, the big stereo dem, mek from bagasse board? I used to screw off the back and lay down inside it while music was blasting. I wish my mom and dad would have understood what was happening," Wayne Smith said.

Smith, 42, works as a baggage clerk supervisor at Lee's Food Fair on Red Hills Road in St Andrew. He has been working there for the past 10 years.

"I wanted to be inside the music," Smith explained. Maybe if they knew that, or maybe if I could have said it, they would have sent me to music school or something," Smith reasoned.

Even though he never got the opportunity to study music, Smith has been working at establishing himself as a musician, and, for the past 15 years, has been moonlighting as a producer.

"It's been a long and rocky road," he told THE WEEKEND STAR.

For Smith, working in an uptown supermarket was like standing on the inside of a revolving door of influential Jamaican people. Smith had no idea that he would eventually become friends with one of dancehall's greats, Vybz Kartel.

"It was about 2007 when he lived on Red Hills Road," Smith told THE WEEKEND STAR. He said that Vybz Kartel supported his aspirations.

"He voiced a song for me called Ghetto Yute Must Get Rich and it did well in terms of airplay, but I didn't know the business of music," Smith told THE WEEKEND STAR.

Smith said he was ignorant to the distribution aspect of the music business at the time and suffered for it.

"Like registering the songs and all of that, I really didn't know much about it," he said.

DEDICATION

But this summer, it seems like his dedication is finally paying off. Lukie D, Nuclear and Harry Shotta are all featured in a song called Summer Times on the Brinks Truck Riddim produced by Smith.

"You know the Brinks truck ..., when they come, they bring money, right? he joked. "I think I gave it the right name. I think I'm getting it, you know?"

Smith has since registered his "Nutt'n Tu Sup'm label and he appears convinced that he is about to break into the music business big time.

"There is a new single coming out and this one, this single, is going to be an anthem," Smith told THE WEEKEND STAR, "and I'm not just saying that."

Smith has named Xtrait as the artiste to watch, with the upcoming single Late in the Night.