By CHUSA SICHONE –
THE rampant piracy levels in the country even with the introduction of the hologram have discouraged upcoming artiste Jay Brown from releasing his debut album.

. Jay Brown

Jay Brown, whose real name is Joseph Banda, 22, actually had to shelve his 11-track album Welcome to Zambia owing to piracy. The album has been gathering dust since last year.
“I did release an album, that was last year, but I couldn’t take it on the market because of a lot of piracy. That was one of the things that stopped me because I knew that I won’t make anything.
“I didn’t take it on the market but it was registered, it was a full
album whereby we even had to put the hologram on it,” Jay Brown said.
Jay Brown observed that introduction of the hologram has had little impact on combating piracy and charged that Zamcops has failed to stop piracy as the organisation allegedly lacks ideas and does not have inspectors to stop pirated products on the market.
He suggested that Zamcops strengthens its partnership with the Zambia Police Service for it to vigorously tackle the problem by arresting those selling pirated music, starting from the source as well as those buying the illegal products.
The 2013 single Welcome to Zambia was from the same shelved album. The song was released during the time Zambia and Zimbabwe co-hosted the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) General Assembly and was well-received by the Ministry of Tourism and Arts.
Instead of releasing the Welcome to Zambia album, Jay Brown is working on a new album called Secret Admirer due for release in August this year. However, he has plans to re-do some songs on what could have been his debut album.
The title track (Secret Admirer) is out and stirring the charts on
local radio stations like ZNBC Radio Two Top 10, Hone FM and Metro FM.
The video was slated for release on April 1, 2015.
Secret admirer talks about Zambia’s beautiful women. It is also an expression of hope that church-minded women are capable of helping their irreligious partners become God-fearing.
Besides Secret admirer, Jay Brown’s other 2015 single is called
Education, in which he urges people, especially young girls, to take school seriously. The song discourages early marriages.
Apart from music, which has been his childhood passion, the
22-year-old Zam-Rap music artist intends to set up a foundation to help the less privileged people in society, especially those from compounds, as well as sensitising them on their rights and freedoms.