by Tissie Chan, STAR Writer

E-Dee is definitely no stranger to the dancehall and hip hop scenes. He has performed alongside some of the top entertainers in the industry: Beenie Man, Sean Paul and D-12 are just a few.

However, it is not the company he keeps but his very own vibes that are currently causing a stir. E-Dee's popularity is evident just from the sheer number of times he has recently featured in the Top 25 hip hop and R&B sales chart. Yet, the musical style he has now established could not be further from how the artiste started out.

He was born in Clarendon to a mother with extremely religious views. E-Dee, born Everton Dennis, sang in the local church choir, and that time church music was about all he was allowed to listen to. But, after his mother's death when he was 12, life taught E-Dee that he must be ambitious and hardworking in order to succeed.

And with this new sense of determination, he eventually landed himself in the States to study and follow his musical dreams.

America brought E-Dee new influences. He began listening to more and more hip hop and R&B. So, naturally he combined these styles with his Jamaican background in music - creating his own sound. Soon people were taking notice of this new talent, and E-Dee was finding himself being wanted for some of the biggest music festival line-ups.

It is easy to understand E-Dee's popularity when you look at the variation in his repertoire. His second single is a cover of Dennis Brown's Revolution featuring Irie Love. From these more traditional reggae sounds to classic club tunes in the making, like R U Ready?, E-Dee has done it all. His album JA 2 LA 2 DI WORLD, as you would expect, charts his journey thus far through life, and so an eclectic collection of subject matter features too. At the end of the year E-Dee will be performing at East Fest Jamaica, in Morant Bay.