Leighton Levy, Gleaner Writer

Great minds think alike, it is said, and apparently great talents too. The proof is in the song Secrets/Hush, the first collaborative effort of Peetah Morgan and Guyanese beauty Timeka Marshall that debuted on Hype TV last week.

Further collaborations between the two entertainers are in the pipeline and based on what was seen last Monday night when the video was released, the world of reggae should be eagerly anticipating what comes next.

It has only been two years since the 20-year-old Marshall set foot on Jamaican soil to shoot her first video, We Should Separate. She subsequently shot another video for All Night, the song produced by Stephen McGregor and video directed by Jay Will.

Through her travels to Jamaica, Marshall has worked with several of Jamaica's top producers, including Handel Tucker, Clive Hunt, Dean Mundy and Shane Brown, with whom she had been eager to work with for some time and who was instrumental in her meeting Morgan. Brown was also instrumental in helping her find stability.

Working on video

"Ever since meeting the team at JukeBoxx, including Peetah, Busy Signal, everyone and everything just started to fit into place," she said.

She revealed how the video with Morgan came into being: "Shane gave me the rhythm and we were going with the idea of secrecy. I went home and wrote this song, Hush, and came back and recorded it."

Several other songs were done on the rhythm, among them one by Morgan called Secrets.

"When we heard it, we realised that both songs were talking about the same thing, mine from the female point of view."

It was then that Brown suggested that Marshall and Morgan do a video together. Brown and Jerome Hamilton from Headline Entertainment had been discussing doing some production work with Marshall and had mentioned it to the Morgan Heritage lead singer. So it was just a matter of time before they began working together on the video.

"Shane edited the two songs together to create one song, and I went in and did some ad libs on her song and she went in and did some ad libs on my song to create that one flow. When you hear the song and see the video, you would not know it's two different songs," Morgan said. "But that is the only place where you will able to hear the two songs as one song because we won't be putting it out for retail."

Natural voice

Morgan said he is impressed with Marshall's talent.

"Her talent is great. She is very young but very experienced, talent-wise, for her age and her sound is strong," he said, comparing Marshall's voice to those of Tessanne Chin and Etana. "A lot of females tend to sing soft with a falsetto type of thing; I love to hear females sing in their natural voice and give you that full power and she has that hands down."

Such was the positive energy and harmony on their first project, the two are already in discussions to do more work together and with another JukeBoxx artiste, Busy Signal.

Marshall already has another single in the works with Busy Signal called Feel For, which is scheduled to be released soon.

"This is the first song I worked with Shane on. It was actually my song only and then Peetah had the brilliant idea that Busy would just sweeten it so much more," she said.

Morgan also hinted at the possibility of an album featuring songs from JukeBoxx artistes later this year.