My family is from Manchester Parish, around Mandeville, in the cooler hills of central Jamaica. I had visited the country many times for birthdays, weddings, family gatherings and stays at resorts. But Kingston confronted me differently. Everything felt compressed: music and government, tourism and daily survival, wealth and poverty. You can move from an affluent area to a severely underserved community in minutes. The density makes inequality harder to look away from.

I understand a version of that divide. I was raised in Brooklyn and now live in Los Angeles, two cities where enormous wealth can exist beside deep struggle. Still, this was my first time experiencing this part of Jamaica so closely.

And I was arriving with cameras.

Walking through Port Royal, I encountered a community with immense pride in itself. Everyone seemed to know everyone else by name. Aside from the block where I was born and raised, I do not know if I have ever felt that same immediate sense of community anywhere else.

I have Jamaican roots, but I was raised in America, and I can admit that part of me yearns for acceptance from the people and culture I come from. I did not want to assume that ancestry alone entitled me to it. I wanted to earn trust through how I behaved.

Places described from the outside as dangerous and poor are often reduced to those two things. Fear becomes a stamp placed over an entire community. People avoid it, so they never meet the human beings who live there. They miss the humor, ingenuity, pride and care that exist alongside hardship. Distance becomes an excuse not to help.

That does not mean danger or deprivation is imaginary. It means neither one tells the whole story.

People told me about artists, photographers and other creatives who had entered their communities, put cameras in their faces and left without learning, acknowledging or compensating anyone. After enough experiences like that, skepticism is not hostility. It is protection.

Hearing those stories broke my heart. Jamaica has given so much to the world, yet people still arrive, absorb some of its energy, add it to their portfolios and move on with their lives.

We also spoke about Hurricane Melissa and the suffering that continued long after international attention moved elsewhere. One person told me, “I saw people cry every day for like three or four months.” People spoke about the help that did arrive and how abundant it could be once the world was paying attention. But I kept wondering why tragedy has to become spectacular before sustained assistance appears. Why must people already living with limited resources lose even more before the rest of the world decides their lives are urgent?

During the hurricane, I saw AI-generated videos of Jamaica circulating online—people smoking weed with sharks and other scenes that were supposed to be funny. Some were almost believable. I found them insensitive and not humorous at all. They turned a real disaster into disposable entertainment, making it easier to lose sight of what was actually happening. It felt like another sign of where we are now: even suffering can become content before it has been understood.

I had come to Jamaica to shoot a music video. After only a few days, I was asking myself what more I could do to help.

We spent time talking with Rastas and visiting their communities on their own terms. I brought a camera that saved digital images while also producing physical instant photographs. We photographed people who participated in the video and gave them prints to keep.

Watching someone receive a portrait became one of the most valuable parts of the trip. A face that had been skeptical or guarded would open into amazement as the image appeared. We were not only collecting images of people; they were leaving with something tangible too.

Trust had nothing to do with who I was or what I had made. It came from being genuine, listening and treating people like collaborators rather than scenery or accessories.

I fell in love with the texture of daily life in Jamaica. That might sound strange coming from somebody with Jamaican blood, but Kingston offered me something I had not experienced before. Around us, somebody rolled a spliff. A woman fried fish. Children ran and played. Goats walked by as if they were citizens of the town. Roosters were simply part of the day. Multicolored shirts and shorts hung from clotheslines like a spectrum across the neighborhood.

The clotheslines themselves interested me. They were supported by flexible tree branches fixed into the ground, able to sway with the island breeze without pulling loose. It was a simple, ingenious design—a small example of something I witnessed constantly: Jamaicans figuring out how to make things work with whatever was available.

I remember telling Darryl, the creative director, that the walls of the houses and outhouses looked like the best colors in a crayon box. They were pastel, weathered and covered in patina—the opposite of the perfect white, gray or black boxes that fill so much of New York and Los Angeles. Nothing felt sterile. Age, weather and human touch were part of the architecture.

As the community gathered around our equipment, people asked questions and eventually took pictures themselves. They connected organically with the song too. Their praise meant even more because the sample came from a Jamaican record made more than four decades earlier. I wondered how many people could hear Jennifer Lara inside what I had made—how many recognized something familiar returning in a new form through dance music, reggae and hip-hop.

During the trip, I made it to Studio One. I stood outside and took a photograph, unsure whether the studio was still active or open to visitors. I never went inside. But even standing there gave the sample a physical address. Jennifer Lara’s song had traveled through time and into my own music, then brought me back to one of the places where its journey began.

The motorcycle portion of the shoot began with devastating news. A woman who was supposed to participate as a bike rider was injured in an accident while traveling to the set. Knowing she was hurt while coming to be part of something I had organized stayed with me throughout the production. Thankfully, she is okay and recovering. I intend to support her recovery and make sure she has what she needs, including the ability to return to riding if and when she chooses.

Later, in Portmore, a local motorcycle crew brought out their bikes to perform on a dirt road. As soon as the first engine revved, people began coming outside. Within moments, the road became a theater and the whole neighborhood became the audience.

For hours, the riders performed wheelies, circles, one-arm tricks and dances on moving motorcycles. I still do not completely understand how they did it. Then the crew took to the highway through St. Catherine, leaving the neighborhood dirt road for open, scenic stretches at higher speeds. I know I will return to that footage for the rest of my life.

Then I remembered that the most important prints were already in Jamaica, in the hands of the people we had photographed. Whatever happened to my luggage, those pictures had reached the people they belonged to.

The bag has since been located, although at the time of writing it has not been returned to me, and I do not yet know whether everything remains inside.

Between the accident, my great-uncle’s death and the missing photographs, the end of the trip forced me to think about how quickly people and objects can disappear. It also clarified what cannot be taken away: the conversations, the laughter, the music, the memories and the relationships we formed.

I now feel responsible for sharing Jamaica’s beauty and culture without separating either one from the realities faced by its people. I am beginning the process of obtaining Jamaican citizenship through my father, who was born there, and my brothers plan to pursue it with me. Citizenship would allow me to participate more deeply in the country’s civic life, remain close to my family for as long as necessary and turn an inherited relationship into an active commitment.

I want to return first and listen. I want to screen the video for the communities that made it possible, bring merchandise connected to the song, make more portraits and make sure that the people on camera can experience the finished work together.

Over time, I want to build a home in Jamaica and a recreational center rooted in music. I also want my upcoming album, Afterburner, to help seed a fund for underserved communities across the island. But before I make promises about what any of that will look like, I need to keep listening to the people it is supposed to serve.

And I want to return to Mitchie’s Record Shop and come home with a much larger stack of records.

The trip included gas-station food that tasted better than meals I have paid too much for, fresh fish, guinep and melon, patois, motorcycles, dominoes, records, mosquito bites and a cleansing drink that gave me embarrassing diarrhea. It gave me four days of new family.

I went to Jamaica believing I knew what I was there to take home. What Jamaica gave me was a clearer understanding of what I must return.