The rhymes and reason behind Five Steez’s hip hop journey

Amidst Jamaica’s dominant reggae and dancehall culture, rapper Five Steez is carving out a lane for hip hop. With every album, he crafts lyrics that challenge expectations, explore social realities and encourage self-belief. It is a journey that has demanded resilience, with the 39-year-old facing criticism over his sound while navigating an industry where opportunities for hip hop artists remain limited.

“I am a hip hop artist in Jamaica, where everything is based around reggae and dancehall. There’s no producer I can easily go to and they’re going to have me in the studio and produce me,” he shared.

For many artists, those realities would have been enough to rethink their careers. But Five Steez, born Peter Wright, chose instead to build the opportunities that did not exist. He filled the gaps himself, seeking out producers, creating stages to perform, building networks and helping nurture a community that could support Jamaican hip hop.

“For me as a rapper, there was never really a path that was paved before. We haven’t had a hip hop industry like a successful rapper in Jamaica, so it wasn’t something that I knew how to achieve or do but out of passion I said this is something I love, I’m going to do it,” he said.

Looking back on his childhood, the Kingston-born MC traces his love for hip hop to an early fascination with music and writing. That passion took him from selling homemade CDs with friends in the corridors of St George’s College to building the unconventional career he had dreamed of.

Wright credits his early exposure to hip hop to his two older brothers, particularly David, who is nine years his senior. Their home was filled with the sounds of American artists such as Run DMC, Public Enemy, KRS-One and EPMD, records that sparked his lifelong fascination with lyricism and storytelling.

By the time Wright reached his early teens, albums like Wu-Tang Forever and Rakim’s The 18th Letter had changed the way he thought about words.

“I was definitely impressed by the lyricism. So hearing that is just like, how do you put words together like that, how do you even think of that?”

Writing had always come naturally for Wright, but rap became the vehicle through which that passion found expression. By then, he knew hip hop was the path he wanted to follow, despite having few Jamaican artists to look up to.

Blazing His Own Trail

One evening, after seeing an advertisement for a show featuring rappers, Wright attended with a friend named Nomad Carlos, who is a fellow member of underground hip hop collective The Council. Rather than simply watching from the audience, they approached the promoters and introduced themselves.

“I figured, okay well this show has rappers in it, why not approach the promoters and say, ‘Hey we’re rappers too.’ That’s exactly what I did and we got into the next show… I had to find my own way,” he said.

One conversation led to another performance, then another. It was the beginning of a lesson Wright would carry throughout his career: if opportunities did not exist, he would create them.

The same determination followed him as he worked to get his music heard. With radio stations reluctant to give unknown hip hop artists airtime, Wright and his team looked elsewhere.

“I remember at one point in the journey, we realised that it wasn’t easy getting radio play because we don’t really have much of a name… but on these local cable entertainment stations, they were playing our videos. So we can shoot our videos, and we can send them to these stations and they would play them,” he recalled.

Wright said stations such as Hype TV and RE TV, which enjoyed strong viewership throughout the early 2000s and into the 2010s, gave his music visibility at a time when traditional media offered few opportunities.

“Then actually, there was the internet. That’s where you have – even before the current social media, I was always up on things like Myspace, connecting with people elsewhere in the world and getting our music out to them,” he added.

Finding Community

The “Soul in the Music” rapper also recalled finding community at Gambling House, a studio he described as the “mecca of hip hop in Jamaica”. He said the space became another turning point in his journey, introducing him to producers and collaborators, including Damien and Inztinkz, who helped shape his debut album, War for Peace.

Additionally, through Manifesto Jamaica, an influential collective of artists and creatives, Wright became part of a movement that helped reshape Kingston’s cultural landscape. He performed at the Manifesto Festival in Toronto, one of Canada’s largest urban arts festivals, sharing the event with artists he had admired since childhood.

Among the highlights was performing at Manifesto Festival in Toronto, where one of the headliners was Rakim, the legendary MC whose music had captivated Wright as a teenager. Years earlier, he had sat in awe listening to The 18th Letter and wondering how someone could write with such precision. Meeting Rakim years later was a full-circle moment, a reminder of just how far his journey had taken him.

Today, Wright’s catalogue includes These Kingston Times (2014), HeatRockz (2016), Quietude (2021), Re:DEFined (2023) and his latest project, The Test of Time, a four-track EP produced with Son Raw. His new album, Re:Emergence, is set to be released on September 29, 2026. Despite steadily expanding his catalogue and taking his music beyond Jamaica’s shores, commercial success and mass appeal have never been Wright’s measure of achievement.

“Some people would listen and say ‘Hey, but it doesn’t sound like dancehall.’ Well, it’s not supposed to, it’s hip hop,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is make what people would call boom bap hip hop, authentic hip hop. Or what I call true school, so that’s pretty much the sound but the Jamaican influence comes in where it’s always going to be the Jamaican perspective you hear and that cultural background, coming out influencing the lyrics and the perspective, influencing the message and the content.”

Wright’s music draws heavily from everyday Jamaican life, exploring themes of identity, social justice, self-actualisation and perseverance. A marketing professional by day, he often reflects on the realities of balancing a full-time career with his artistic ambitions. His lyrics also confront issues such as corruption and police brutality, while encouraging listeners to better understand themselves and pursue their own purpose.

“One of the messages is that you can achieve what you want. With knowledge of self and with determination, and I try to exemplify that. I try to use my own journey and story, to inspire people and show them, you can do something that you have in your mind, whether people tell you it’s impossible or it’s hard or it’s never been done before.”

When asked about his legacy, Wright said he wants to be remembered as one of the artists who helped define Jamaican hip hop, while serving as a respected ambassador for the country’s underground scene overseas.

“If it’s an event that’s happening, and that type of presence is needed, I’m that guy. Where there’s that intersection between Jamaica and hip hop, I’m going to be there.

“I want to be on hip hop platforms repping for Jamaica and let it be known that there is a scene for hip hop here. There’s love for the culture here, there is talent here… The local scene has always been something that I’m passionate about and I want to resurrect it.”

(LM)