12. Lexxus
Lex had that voice as well. Slightly different, but if you’re uneducated, then it probably sounds the same to you. It’s definitely different, but at the same time, he had a good tone and good content as well. Humorous content that was new to the music. That was fresh. Anything Lexxus, his name at the time, did seem fresh and young to me. It didn’t sound old and boring, which reggae could be to me, because I associated it with my parents. So it was old and boring, but when the new stuff started happening around the year 2000, it was all interesting and it sounded like a lot of the artists were trusting that you don’t have to have a particular voice that might be catchy, you could just go in the complete opposite direction. You could sound bassy, if that’s natural to you – some people put it on and some people just can’t. It was exciting, and it was more evidence that music was changing, styles were changing. It’s a bit like me.
Lexxus’s content was not really an influence for me, just his style and his delivery: when to use the voice to make the bass more intense or when to be a bit lighter. Lexxus specifically used a lot of humour, so his voice might go up a few octaves to actually tell a joke, and when he got to the more serious part, his voice gets serious again. Stuff like this definitely influenced my delivery and control.
