Plucked from the violent ghetto of Waterhouse in Kingston, Jamaica by producer Russell ‘Phred’ Hergert, electro-dub-step crossover Terry Lynn is breathing new life into stolid dancehall scene with her debut record KingstonLogic 2.0. Over beats contributed by Wildlife! and Olivier Giacomotto, Lynn exposes the harsh realities of ghetto-living through searing street journalism, indicting everyone from local pimps to the IMF in her calls for change. Rejecting the payola system where aspiring artists pay disc-jockeys to play their records, Lynn and Phred pressed 1,000 copies of the album to give it away ‘Phree’ on the streets of Kingston. Dazed Digital spoke to Terry after her first ever UK performance at Rough Trade East, stunning the crowd in front of visuals of her hometown by photography collective Afflicted Yard.

Dazed Digital: Did you have a musical upbringing?
Terry Lynn: No, not very much so. When you’re in Jamaica you have a little musical upbringing with sound-systems in the streets but in Jamaica my generation didn’t have instruments to play with. Recently, about two years now, Phred bought me a guitar. He said, “You’ve got to learn to strum something” and I think it really helps. But apart from hearing the old Formica stereo play a little bit of something, some distant radio play something on a Sunday or some sound-system in the street, having an instrument around the house? No. It’s really backward…

DD: Do you remember the first song that you sung along to or the fist song that you learnt?
Terry Lynn: When I was about two, in the early 1980s, and I was like, [breaking into song] “I need you, you are my shining star! Ba-Dum Ba Dum!” That was the first song that I could remember as a child. I used to sing that all the time. I could really remember singing as a child. I don’t remember the guy’s name now or what the band name was but that was the song I remember singing, “Honey, I never leave you lonely…”

DD: What’s it like living in an environment as violent as Waterhouse?
Terry Lynn: It’s not the only place that is violent. In almost every ghetto in the world and every ghetto in Kingston, Jamaica, so when I speak I don’t really speak about Waterhouse itself only. Yeah, I talk about Waterhouse but because it’s where I learned what living in a ghetto is about. But I grew up there, I’m the last of nine children and my mum raised nine of us. I mean in all ten of us, one wasn’t her child, my half-brother, and none of us ever get caught-up in the law or killed, and I’m so grateful for that thank God. So it’s like she showed us that we could grow into situations and not be a part of it. It’s really rigid, waking up in the morning and somebody lying dead in the back-alleys, it’s not right. It’s not in Waterhouse only, you see it in the news locally, internationally and the constant bloodletting is just stupid.

DD: What’s your most formative experience?
Terry Lynn: The whole of life is an experience. It’s not like I’m the only person who grew up poor. When I reach maybe ten or eleven I realise the struggle because I had to go to the market to help my mother sell, then I started to realize the struggles she’d go through to raise so many of us. That make me start thinking about life, in a way that life is really serious. It’s important that you know that when you see somebody die that he’s no more. If you have achievement I mean it dies with you. All that is the whole situation that I grew up around that really make me for what I am because if it’s not shooting somebody or being a prostitute it’s trying do something positive.

DD: How would you describe your sound?
Terry Lynn: I don’t want to sound cocky but I would chose to describe it as a futuristic music for Jamaica. The dancehall system has become stagnant and it needs freshness to be injected to breathe back some kind of life. I would think that my music would do that. I think it’s futuristic music of Jamaica.

DD: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve heard?
Terry Lynn: At one point a lady told me that if you’re going somewhere you can’t sit here until somebody die. “Ok, I need to go up to Hackney but I’m sitting here”? You would have to go down the road and make the first step to a cab or something. That’s the only way to get to where you want to go. What she’s trying to say is “You’ve got to step if you wanna go somewhere”. So I think that’s one of the best pieces of advice. Yeah, and that laid the foundation of what I’m living. Wherever it takes you, just go.

DD: What’s the next year going to bring for Terry Lynn?
Terry Lynn: Oh God! I’ve never thought of it. I couldn’t say, I’m not the ruler of destiny. I could ask the omnipotent and go, “God, what is going to bring?” I don’t know. I’m just trying to forge forward within me and the work. I’m just asking for life on the edge of strange so I can bring the word and bring the message out, keep working at what I want to do.

Kingston Logic 2.0 out now.