Papa San was one of dancehall music’s leading hitmakers from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. Songs such as I Will Survive , Style and Fashion , Maddy Maddy Cry , Strange Things , Round Table Talk, and Legal Rights (both with Lady G) were chart-toppers, and he received the coveted DJ of The Year title on multiple occasions. However, in 1997, he took an about-turn, giving up secular music and committing his life to the Lord.
The veteran entertainer shared the influence of his personal experiences on his past life and music, underlining the impact of his faith on his overall growth. “I was born in Kingston and lived at Tower Street and then moved to Thompson Pen in Spanish Town and later Dela Vega City, and I saw so much violence, so much dead men on the ground, so much people died by either stab wounds or gunshot and different things. So you live in an environment that’s filled with violence and political wars, and your mind has been trained to live a certain way, where the gun is your protection and your friend is your security,” he said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer .
“Music stepped into play and it helped me to elevate, and then when you elevate, you have the fame, the girls, the popularity, and you’re travelling all over the world, that was my life. And when I achieved all of that, I was still depressed. I felt like a lonely man in a room.
Eventually, you’re just going to hit a dead-end road. There’s a void,” he added. Papa San was in Jamaica .