Unlike Shaggy, who joined the Marines before making a career in music, Zumjay recently announced that he was joining a US Army reserve regiment after several months of training.
According to the site One876, the reason is mainly to put food on the table: married since 2006 and the father of a little girl, the Jamaican deejay, already settled in New York, wants to be able to guarantee his family financial security. Another argument is that this commitment will allow him to go back to university in the United States.
Zumjay is not the first artist to take up a professional activity outside music, but he remains one of the few to have spoken publicly about the choice, many not daring to admit that their music no longer feeds them.
We should however keep hearing Zumjay on record, since he has not given up recording. Proof of that is his latest single, Been there, did it, produced by Steve "Lenky" Marsden (to whom we owe the Diwali riddim, among others).