Jada Kingdom gets int'l love for 'Banana'

Singing sensation Jada Kingdom is today enjoying some international love as her song 'Banana' has received some rave reviews from New York-based music magazine, 'The Fader'.

On Tuesday, one writer for the popular music magazine dubbed the song her new favourite song, praising the track and Kingdom for the brilliant use of double entendre.

In the song, Kingdom uses the fruit banana to cleverly refer to the male genitalia. When the song was released a few months ago, it had social media in a frenzy as women did their own remixes of the song, professing their love for the 'banana'. The 'banana challenge' was trending on social media for a number of weeks.

Speaking with THE WEEKEND STAR about The Fader recognition, an ecstatic Kingdom said that she felt honoured and inspired by the attention.

"My manager, Julian, saw it on Twitter, that's how we found out about it. So, it was a very pleasant surprise. It's a great look because it just happened organically. The Fader is an international tastemaker brand, so to see them pick up on my music in such a positive way is inspiring," she said. "It got a great placement on a big playlist on Spotify, and it's been getting on a lot of playlist love on Apple Music, too. So, it's been streaming relatively well, and Julian told me that it's actually started to get some spins on a few mainstream stations in the US now, so it's showing up in Mediabase."

LOCAL SUPPORT

Kingdom added that the love Banana has been receiving overseas has been as a result of the support the track has been getting in Jamaica. She also said that local deejays have been blasting the song at events.

"It's getting a lot of love in Jamaica, which really helps DJs and tastemakers overseas take notice," she said. "We are continuing to push it. The lyric video is touching a million views already, and we are putting the video out soon too, so we are taking our time and trying to stay the course with this one. We don't want to set our expectations too high, so we just doing our part and see where it goes."

The singer also said that she will be dropping the official music video for the song in short order.

VIDEO SHOOT

"We are shooting the video next week and plan to drop it soon after. We have had so many requests for it, but we strategised to drop the lyric video first so that everyone can be familiar with the song in a more intricate way.

The #bananaremixchallenge also really helped, and the selectors and radio in Jamaica have really showed it a lot of love, so the timing is good to drop the visuals now."