“Before We leave, I want you hold me, before we leave, I want you to whine with me.”
You can now probably remember the lyrics for this smash single without a doubt as the most popular groovy song by the artiste Lennard ‘Young Lyrics’ Henry back in 2018.
Fast forward three years later and this budding artiste is still trailblazing the airwaves with releases including his latest single “Kiss” on the Project Romance Riddim produced by Andrew Dorsett.
The artiste is particularly excited about this release since it is the first time he has released official visuals for any of his recordings.
The blazing new music video for “Kiss” was released earlier this month on March 10 and was directed, shot, and edited by Zea Wiltshire of ZW Creative Media.
“This project is especially special to me because I was able to work with Andrew Dorsett to create a song that steamed off of real-life experiences and also a very talented videographer,” the 23-year-old artiste told Observer.
The man behind the creative direction and shooting of the visuals, Zea Wilshire, was impressed at how effortlessly the project came together.
He said, “I always try to go over and beyond for my clients. It’s one thing to produce good quality but doing so in a super-efficient manner makes your clients tell the entire world about you. It also shows how passionate you are about your craft. In a market that is getting increasingly saturated, it’s important to have traits that makes you stand out.”
Wilshire credited Young Lyrics for trusting him with this project saying, “when you can feel that someone is passionate about their craft, it helps in the way they prepare. Young Lyrics was willing to give me room to think, and to work with a basic guideline that his team suggested”.
Young Lyrics himself is pretty satisfied about the final production of this video project and is asking the country to support young creatives.
Looking back on his journey from the early beginnings of his career between 2014-2016, the artiste said it was “a learning experience on many different levels. Being able to learn and work on a lot of my weaknesses and build on stage performance skills and creativity as an artiste was also a positive take away from this phase of my career”.
In 2017, Young Lyrics took on the music scene with a new attitude and sound, releasing “Hush Ya Mouth” and “Base ah me Heart” which became fan favourites during the Carnival season. This was the year the singer transitioned from the junior soca monarch to adult soca monarch preliminaries. His follow up releases in 2018 included “Bang Down” produced by Willow Beats and Daddy Wayne Productions; “Bring Up”, featuring Zamoni, also produced by Daddy Wayne; and his summer smash single “Before We Leave” produced by System 32 out of Trinidad.
When asked if he knew “Before We Leave” was going to become as big as it was, he chuckled and said a confident “Yes!” He said the song is truly one of the biggest musical projects he has worked on to date since he put a lot of time and energy into getting the record right. “I think the record is bigger than me,” he said.
The impact of “Before We Leave” was profound and far reaching for an artiste his age in Antigua and Barbuda with over 61,000 YouTube views to date.
In 2019, Young Lyrics released “Loyal”, “Expectations”, “Hole in my Heart”, and “Fete Forever”, and was gearing up for his biggest year in music. Unfortunately for the artiste, late 2019 brought some unexpected news, forcing him to step out of the public spotlight to focus on his health. Looking back on that period in his career he said: “I felt that was it…I honestly felt like my music career was going to be over.” But after making a full recovery towards the start of 2020, the young artiste focused his efforts on his craft.
In late 2020 Young Lyrics stepped back into the spotlight releasing his first single since his health scare, called “Outside” featuring popular local Blashford ‘DJ Quest’ Wilkins, that quickly became a fan favourite.
Currently, Young Lyrics is under the wings of the ID Nation brand headed by Soca Super Star Ricardo Drue, and credits his musical style and influences to artiste like Machel Montano, Bruno Mars, Justin Beiber and the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
When asked about his future goals, he said becoming an international star and having a successful career to provide for his family is at the top of his list. He credits his brother Lenn Henry for taking on the role of his manager from day one, and lives by his personal life motto “find ways to keep pushing on”; and that is exactly what he has been doing.
His “Kiss” single is now available on AudioMack and SoundCloud music streaming platforms with the official visuals on his YouTube channel YoungLyricsMusic.