Tenae still feels ‘Pain’ from losing older brother

Up-and-coming dancehall artiste Tenae has been battling emotions of grief and betrayal, but has learnt how to put that into words and music that is "engaging rather than enraging".

He told THE WEEKEND STAR that the pain of losing his older brother, Kadeem Rolle, eight years ago still lingers, and that, combined with "truths revealed" about people he had invested his trust in since the launch of his career, has made him more reflective.

"He [Kadeem] died in a car accident in 2014, but it always comes back on my mind. Because he was the one I would watch, write songs and deejay for fun, before I even thought I'd do music," Tenae shared.

"When you dealing with certain things, you have expectations of people you trust and to have that misused ... is hard. I have been going through a lot, but then I received a riddim from Templeboss of Templeboss Records and all that came to mind was to voice my pain," he continued.

Tenae said that he had several brothers, but that he was closest to the one who passed away, having lived in the same home with their mother. He believes that he is living a dream that his late sibling would be proud to see become a reality.

He recorded his latest single, Pain, and released it in August, one month ahead of the anniversary of his brother's death, and over the past two months, it has earned him 560,000 views on YouTube, the highest any of his tracks has garnered this far. Tenae and Templeboss released Rich Forever in the summer which received approximately 412,000 views.

"From the number of views and streams, I think I can now say my recording career is seeing improvement. And the way I engage people and overall recording has been getting better. I've got on shows in my home town in Hanover, like Champions League and Galaxy Sanctum which featured Jah Vinci," he said. "The latest single is doing well because it shows real emotions, real me ... as do most of my songs, and it is relatable because people feel pain for a lot of different reasons, but it's universal."

Tenae, who turns 23 on December 27, said that through the pain he has a lot to celebrate as his son's due date is on his birthday.

"Either way he will be sharing a birth month with me and he is my new source of inspiration and reason to use music for positive. I'm also looking forward to the release of other songs recorded with Templeboss Records," the artiste said.