The Grammys Are on Sunday. She’s Already Won.

Written By Sandra E. Garcia

The Jamaican singer Spice is the first female hard-core dancehall artist to be nominated for a Grammy in the Best Reggae Album category.

When Grace Hamilton was 17, her best friend wrangled her an audition to sing at the Sting Festival, one of Jamaica’s largest one-day festivals of reggae and dancehall performances. She sang four songs that her father, Anthony, taught her, and the promoter gave her a slot. “I remember someone asked me one time if I had butterflies in my stomach, and I said, ‘No, it felt like bats,’” Ms. Hamilton, now 39, said, bursting into laughter. “I was really, extremely nervous, but I remember thinking of the opportunity and not wanting to blow it. That is the moment where Spice was born,” she said, referring to the name she performs under.

More than 20 years after that audition, she received her first Grammy nomination for best reggae album, for “10,” which debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard reggae album chart, a first for a hard-core dancehall artist.

An offshoot of reggae, with deeper bass and faster tempo, dancehall is a culture in and of itself. Its influence is prevalent throughout mainstream American pop music, including the bright colored wigs and provocative outfits women wear and the dance moves popularized at parties and in its music videos.

The performances beckon theatrics, and the genre is also known for its raunchiness. Spice stands out because her lyrics aren’t only raw and unfiltered, they are also straightforward. She is known to deliver a bawdy and explicit performance in her Jamaican patois.

But her journey from Portmore, Jamaica, to the Grammys has not been without struggle. Spice’s father died when she was 9, and when her family’s home was destroyed by a fire, she was forced to find shelter with cousins and friends. She credits her success in a male-dominated genre and industry to her perseverance.

After her breakout performance at Sting, Spice — or Little Spice, as she was known then — began to sing regularly at dancehall festivals and parties, challenging male artists to freestyle battles.

Spice performing at Amazura, a club in Queens, N.Y., this past winter.Credit...Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times

Her slick turns of phrases made her popular on the island, and her rapping style and ability to battle alongside male artists, like Elephant Man and Sizzla, impressed the self-proclaimed general of dancehall, Bounty Killer, who met Spice when she was 14.

“She is a real female gladiator,” Bounty Killer said. “When she first went onstage to battle with the boys, nobody knew her, she had no popular song, and the boys were more popular than her. That’s a big thing, that’s not ordinary.”

In 2003, Spice began to tour in the Caribbean, Europe and the United States. That year, she connected with Dave Kelly, a respected dancehall producer, and released “Fight Over Man,” which became a hit. Three years later, she decided to manage herself.

“I felt like I was so creative, and I was the one that was doing the work anyway,” she said. “I started to make music videos, visuals and better things for myself because now I’m building a brand.” In 2009, “Romping Shop,” her single with another dancehall legend, Vybz Kartel, spent 15 weeks on the Billboard chart. In 2014, she released her debut EP, “So Mi Like It,” which was also a success, reaching No. 14 on Billboard’s reggae album chart. In 2018, she joined the cast of the reality show “Love & Hip Hop Atlanta” to gain visibility, she said. Spice had already broken into the American mainstream, but she wanted to “add a face to the sound.”

That same year, she released a mixtape, “Captured,” which reached No. 1 on the reggae albums chart. “You felt what she was saying because it was done with so much passion and so much conviction and energy behind it, and that’s how she broke through the pack,” said Shaggy, 53, the Grammy Award-winning reggae singer who is the executive producer of “10.” “She is literally embodying everything that she has been taught through Jamaican culture.”

Today, Spice is no longer the nervous girl freestyling at the Sting Festival. Now, when Spice commands the stage, she is in complete control. Her voluptuous body is often strategically covered by custom outfits made of stretchy fabric in vivid colors, which usually match the vibrant blue of her signature wig. Earlier this year, at a performance at Amazura, a nightclub in Queens, she arrived with a metal suitcase in tow, wearing a pale pink bob wig, a matching leotard and an ankle-length tulle coat to match her thigh-high socks that were decked with fluffy pink feathers. The crowd, aiming their camera phones at her, became a sea of LED lights, bouncing to the rhythm of the heavy dancehall bass playing from the huge speakers.

Spice began to sing, then pointed the microphone to the audience, who shouted her lyrics back to her. Soon, she was twerking across the stage, dropping into splits, all the while continuing to rap. She was brimming with attitude and slow-whining to the beat. “It’s something within me that I was naturally born with,” she said about her high-powered performances. “I’m a high energy type of person, and dancehall gives me the sense of wanting to dance and move and just kind of lift my spirits.”

If Spice does win a Grammy on Sunday, it won’t belong just to her. “For Spice to win a Grammy, that would mean Portmore, the heart of the ghetto, wins the Grammy,” Bounty Killer said. “Jamaica wins a Grammy.”