A crowd-funded trip to Jamaica this past summer has boosted a New Orleans musician to a new level of success.

Loyola University senior and Maryland native Ayotemi Adediwura said his passion for reggae music made him journey to land where it all began.

“Something just pulled me out to Jamaica,” he said. “A lot of my understanding about the world around me, about love has come from me listening to reggae music and the messages in these songs.”

After spending a month in Jamaica over the summer, Ayotemi brought his experiences back to the Big Easy with a message of spreading love and unity.

During his time there, the singer-songwriter learned about the origins of reggae and performed live with Chronixx on Haile Selassie’s birthday and made songs with Leno Banton, Blvk H3ro and Supa Glen, the bassist who worked on Bob Marley’s track, “Satisfy My Soul.”

He was also able to experience the Jamaican culture and he immersed himself with the people learning about the social and political struggles Jamaicans go through on a daily basis.

Something that he said inspires him was seeing how they remain so positive despite the conditions working against them.

While there, local musicians added the bass line and percussion tracks to his revised song “Supaman” and he recorded a music video for the song as well.

“I was surrounded by such legendary energy, such dope people and they recognized the vibration that I was trying to bring,” said Ayotemi.

Now back in New Orleans, he brings the vibe he felt in Jamaica to his collective of independent artists known as Irie, comprised of fellow Loyola senior and friend since freshman year, Sam Girardot (Samwyse) and Yaszmine Foucha, a junior at University of New Orleans.

The collective’s name is a word derived from Jamaica and the trio interprets the word through the acronym: “I & I Reflects Interconnected Eternity.”

“When we talk about peace and love, that’s something we try to reflect with our music,” said Samwyse, whose new song “Intuition” is scheduled for release on Oct. 6. “It sounds very typical, but it’s a very deep thing, because that’s what ‘I and I’ is, it’s the interconnected ‘we are one.’

Through their music, they said it’s their goal to unite people by fighting oppression and the evil and negativity in the world by using their weapon—music.

“The real beauty of it is when you realize that you are apart of this interconnected system, it gives you a certain strength to know that you are apart of something that is much bigger than yourself. It’s to be part of the reflection of god. Once you realize that, you have a certain respect, a certain love for yourself,” said Ayotemi.

Though the Crescent City isn’t known for its reggae, the Irie Collective is combining hip-hop, soul and R&B sounds, mixing it with the city’s rich jazz and blues culture and traditional roots reggae sounds to create conscious music and their own sound.

Foucha, a New Orleans native, said one of her goals is to keep the traditional sounds of the city alive in her own way.

“I really want to bring jazz back to the city actually, because jazz musicians here are starving artists,” said Foucha, whose debut single, “Sucre Sucre” is scheduled for release Oct. 20. “Everyone around the world loves it, so I really want to connect everyone together with my music.”

As a business, the collective’s long-term goal is to start a record label.

The collective is run under the management of Off Topic Entertainment, an agency for independent creative professionals created by Loyola senior Randall Swain around the same time Ayotemi and Samwyse began making music together freshman year.

The collective said they want to unify people by creating big shows and possibly even a festival one day featuring artists from the Irie Collective.

“We are essentially going to be a label that signs and brings on people that have the same values, wanting to bring this love to the world,” said Ayotemi. “So that’s why we’re extending this to a collective, making it more inclusive and truly reflecting irie, ‘I and I.’

As freshmen together at Loyola, Ayotemi, Samwyse and Swain produced and created one of their first songs, “Supaman,” but the song didn’t meet the quality of the recording they were looking for because they didn’t have the resources to get a studio sound.

Now three years later, having evolved as artists, they went back and revised the song this past May to match their creative vision.

“Just as we’ve grown up, the song kind of grew up with us. It’s like a reflection of growth on all of our parts,” said Ayotemi.

During a live-studio session at The Parlor Recording Studio in the Irish Channel neighborhood, they were able to record the vocals, guitar, keys and drum tracks for “Supaman.”

They later combined the bass line and percussion tracks recorded in Jamaica for the final mix.

“It’s simple, just a bunch of musicians coming in and doing their thing, an organic vibe. It’s crazy because we were working on the song here in America, I went over to Jamaica and got the vibes from there and brought people together from all walks of life,” said Ayotemi.

“Supaman” dropped on Sep. 21 and that day also marked Irie’s gig at the Dragon’s Den, their first show as a collective.

“That was so fun,” said Samwyse. “That was the most fun I’ve ever had performing thus far.”

Foucha said the energy that night was like nothing else she’s experienced.

“When we got on stage together, we kind of lost ourselves in it. It was beautiful,” said Foucha.

The collective said that the show was a culmination of time and hard work to show how far they’ve come.

Fans and supporters of Irie also agree.

“I’ve been going to see Temi perform and a few Off Topic Entertainment shows since freshman year and it’s been cool to see how much these incredible performers have evolved and really found their niche,” said Amy Watkins, who attended Irie’s show at the Dragon’s Den.

Elly Wilde, Irie’s manager said she’s noticed a big improvement since they first started and is excited for the potential of the collective.

“It’s like an exponential growth in what we had before. You guys still had the skeleton of what y’all were doing, but now it’s getting flesh,” Wilde said to the collective. “There was a moment in the show where I was like, ‘this is what I could be doing for a while.’ I want to get the message out and I want to book shows because you guys speak for yourselves.”

After performing for the first time as a collective, Irie will be back in the spotlight with shows Oct. 9 at the Pontchartrain Hotel rooftop bar, the Soundbytes Jam Series at the Ace Hotel on Oct. 26 and they travel to Mobile, Ala. on Dec. 8 performing with Alfred Banks at the Merry Widow.

“It showed that we are at a level now where we can execute. We’re an organism, we’re an empire in the making and it was the genesis,” said Ayotemi.