Rastaboyz.com - The Voice of Reggae Dancehall (Vancouver, Canada)

October 2010

Rickey Teetz

Montego Bay's Rickey Teetz is an artiste and entrepreneur with incredible focus, a strong work ethic, and a never-say-die attitude. The rising dancehall star has been releasing new videos and mixtapes at a breakneck speed. His mission: to put Western Jamaica on the map as a hotbed for music. He says the prevailing expectation in Jamaica is that "once you start doing music you'll run to the Capital and rent an apartment and once you're there you'll get your music out." Rickey Teetz "But I don't want to do that, I want to create my own sound. I want to set my own grounds. My own foundation, so that it all comes back." His hard work is starting to pay off, he's had videos in the top 10 on the popular Suzie Q's Video Alley, and he says that people are "recognizing that I'm putting mixtape out after mixtape, and people are recognizing that I have talent." He has three shows booked this month, and turned down a fourth because "I believe I was a bit better than that and they could have done better than that". It wasn't always this way though.

Ricardo McLean's younger years growing up in the Rose Heights section of Montego Bay were a struggle. His father died when he was six and without a father figure and without the means to support himself he was forced to sell bag juice, bread, and whatever he could get his hands on at the market. "I didn't really get...hungry to the extent where I have to go out and do something negative...and I think that's what lead me to the entrepreneurship world...[but]...I always try to feed my mind regardless, because not every time it happens where I wanted it to." Through his persistence and street smarts, and the help of "some persons", he was able to go to high school. "I give thanks everyday for that."

It was the life experiences of struggling on the street and graduating from high school that birthed the name Rickey Teetz. "Once you're from the ghetto part, people, it's automatically that you're going to get a name. So I'm a person that has a lot of teeth as a youngster..." Teeth became Teetz, his childhood name. In high school all his friends called him Rickey instead of Ricardo. "So what I did was I put both names together...I know that's me because once you say Rickey Teetz that's a part of me, because it emerged directly from getting a name in the garrison part to me getting a name in high school, so it's a depiction of all of me."

The struggle didn't end there though, the year after he graduated from Anchovy High Rickey Teetz' mother passed away, and the young artiste found himself the breadwinner for his brothers and sisters. Tragically one of his brothers also died a few years later. But just as he did when he was a boy, Rickey Teetz turned the hardship and pain into something positive. He started his own side businesses, invested in real estate, and kept creating music. "Once the mind is occupied doing something, regardless if it takes a year or it takes a million years, but once the mind is occupied doing something that's positive, it's going to have a positive output".

Some of this positive output involves contributing to actual charities like the Westhaven Children's Home. The Westhaven Children's Home houses approximately 80 children who've been abandoned by their parents, and being over 8 years of age are too old to reside at Government homes; many of the children at Westhaven also have physical and mental disabilities. Rickey Teetz says "I tend to help out a lot in my community. Every year we give out a lot of books to unfortunate children and persons who don't have it". Although he doesn't consider himself religious he explains, "I'm a spiritual person. I believe there's one God...I've been through a lot. I've been through a car accident...that crushed and all of it mashed up like crazy and I'm alive...I'm from the ghetto. Persons of war go in front of me before. And in front of my face... and I'm still here. So I've been through a lot. There's someone guiding me through the worst parts".

Music is the main means that he sees for uplifting his community, "so that my fellow peers in the Western region can know that they can have peace and prosperity just the same". "People don't ever expect anyone to do music from the Western region...because we don't have the resources for getting the music out that means that we have to sit back and generation after generation we can't achieve anything?" Rickey doesn't buy that. "I'm here to stay. I'm here to set the world, I'm here to set the grounds with the whole movement. My team, the Win Out family, the Win Out Entertainment Group."

He believes in his music and he believes in his future success. "I'm doing it because I believe in it." Definitely it's nonstop for me. It's a next video, it's a next mixtape, it's a next video, it's a next mixtape. I will not stop pushing it until they accept it and when they accept it I'm going to push it harder." He says he can see himself on a BET or MTV awards show in several years time. I wouldn't bet against him, his positive thinking and hard work have already taken him a long ways, from selling buns in the market to building a rental apartment building, and most importantly his songs are tight. Especially strong are "What Life Is" and "Evicted", which can be found on his most recent mixtape Da Undaground Saga.

What's next on the horizon for Rickey Teetz? "The Rickey Teetz Birthday Bash, it's a purple and white affair...And next year you can look out for another mixtape. By February is another new video...I have another street video coming out early next month also. But I don't really publicate it for TV, but it's for youtube purpose."

You can follow Rickey Teetz on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, his videos can also be found on youtube.