Xana Romeo ADD

Xana Romeo & Jallanzo - The 'The Divine Blueprint' Interview

02/23/2026 by Jessica Knight

2024 - 2025 was an eventful time for Xana Romeo. She celebrated her father, Max Romeo’s 80th Earthstrong in November 2024, recorded her last song with him shortly after, and released it on what would have been his 81st birthday had he not passed in April 2025. To mark this anniversary, Xana released the first single from her new double album, The Divine Blueprint. Over All features Max along with melodica from Addis Pablo. The Divine Blueprint is the culmination of a year of refining how to archive the family values passed down to Xana through her father, the Bible, and other members of her extensive musical family, in sound.

She consciously invites artists such as Lutan Fyah to co-create based on their own livication to ensuring that messages of Love, African Roots and maternal lineage live on. Omar ‘Jallanzo’ Johnson dons his wizarding hat (among others) as The Dub Wizard, producing Divine Dub’s for most of the tracks from The Divine Blueprint, which is a 12-track commemoration to all that Xana wants her children to claim. Jallanzo also produced the majority of the riddims, re-kindling a fruitful sonic partnership with long-time collaborator Xana, as well as with Luke Dixon and Stone from Dubtonic Kru. Here, the duo discuss the year-long process of manifesting this project, giving insight into the bread and butter of Xana’s many ideas, as served on a platter of Jallanzo’s making.

This is your third collaboration with Jallanzo!

Xana: Yeah, third album collaboration, but I've been collaborating with Jallanzo all my life, from when I was around 10 years old.

Jallanzo, how do you work with Xana to bring out what she has in her head?

Jallanzo: I think, being also an artist, a singer, and being on stage in front of the audience, it kinda give me a better scope of how to work with everybody, you know? If I'm producing and a bass player is playing, because I can play the bass, and I know the feel that I want, I can get more out of it. I try to work with them. Like, they're the bread – the bread comes as it is, and I'm just trying to add the butter. If it need butter, or jam, or jelly, you know, and a knife, and a platter…

HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT THE ALBUM? HAS THERE BEEN ANY FEEDBACK SO FAR ON THE OVER ALL SINGLE RELEASE?

Jallanzo: Maybe good is not the word, but that's the only word I know in my vocabulary right now. So, yeah, I feel good. I feel humbled and excited at the same time. This album, we've been working on it for quite some time now, a few months. And as for the single, we've been getting some good feedback from the single. Very excellent feedback. People love the sound, the work.

Xana: It's been good. Apart from the fact that it's a good song, and it is produced well, and written well, and sung well by myself, it features my father. He's recently passed away, so… I think a lot of people appreciate the fact that I chose to release a feature with my father on his birthday. I would say that Over All is doing quite great.

JALLANZO, DID YOU DO ALL THE DUBS ON THE DIVINE DUB ALBUM?

Jallanzo: Yeah, pretty much. There's one song that we're featuring [with a] Luke [Dixon] Dub. He did a live dub on Message For You.

WHO WROTE THE RIDDIM FOR FOLIE À DEUX?

Jallanzo: I did.

Xana, how come you selected this song, which is quite a departure from the other riddims?

Jallanzo: [Laughing] ‘A departure…’

Xana: First of all, the title. Touring with my father, I spent most of my time in France. When we go to Europe, we would base in France, and then leave from [there], and go out on our tours, and on a day off, we'll come back to France. So I spent a lot of time around French people between 2016 to now. I don't speak fluent French, but there are little French words that I know. I remember the first time I came to light with the words, Folie à Deux. I hear somebody say the words, but I remember that when I heard, I googled it, and I saw that it means ‘madness for two’. And I said, ‘Oh, Madness for two and folie à deux rhymes’. When I started reading more into the definition, it started painting a picture of Joker and Harley Quinn from the Marvel series. That is the definition that I would give to a folie à deux relationship.

So, forwarding to years later, when Jallanzo sent me this riddim, I was actually witnessing a relationship right in front of my eyes, you know? It was last year, 2024, later down in the year that Jallanzo sent me the riddim. I said to myself, this riddim, it's so… not old, but it sounds like… nostalgia, something coming at me, like, the feel, it's perfect. Yeah, man, I love it. Immediately, I love it. Just like [the] Will the Sun Come Out Today riddim, [they] are my two favorite riddim dem from the whole album. Dem just sound different.

i think that song is gonna resonate with a lot of women.

Xana: I think that I write love songs in ways that nobody else in my space are writing, because if I ever listen to a song like For My King [from The Roots of X album] each verse is repetition. But each repetition is with purpose. Like, the first verse is dedicated to the man. The second verse is my son, and the third verse is my father. You know, growing up, I never really liked writing love songs, because it is so easy to write a song, say, ‘Well, baby, I love you’. And the man come back and say, ‘Yes, baby, I love you’. Too easy for me. I realized with every love song I write, I never intentionally start writing a love song. It just finish, and it come out like that.

Bloodline is a song you've done with Azizzi. you were just talking about how you write something, and then you realize it has different meanings. Azizzi says the line, ‘son of royalty speaking’, and i'm thinking about how you conceive of the divine blueprint as the african woman. ‘son of royalty’ is like, alright, you have the Max Romeo factor, and then you have the broader concept blueprint. How much of what i'm saying would you agree with?

Xana: I agree 100%. I wrote Bloodline probably in 2018, around the same time when I wrote Spiritual Guidance. That's the song I did on my previous album, The Roots of X with Azizzi. Bloodline is basically speaking of the fact that I believe that even me being from the bloodline of Max Romeo, I'm also from the bloodline of Ethiopia and right back to Solomon, right straight back to David. I truly believe that, so Bloodline is basically saying that the African DNA, the African bloodline, as in the end of the song, as you see, is very important.

You said Will The Sun Come Out Today? is one of your favorite songs. That has Micah Shemaiah on it…

Xana: Micah is my favorite artist from my generation of music here in Jamaica. I've been listening to Micah for years. I think Micah is extremely talented. He's a great songwriter, amazing singer, amazing person, and an amazing father. The chorus for Will the Sun Come Out Today? – I wrote that when I was living in Greenwich Farm in Kingston, when I was around 5 years old. I remember myself standing on the veranda, singing, ‘Will the sun come out today? Will the sun come out today?’ In our melody, because my father used to sing the song that says, ‘I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?’

And when I was young, I would ask him what the song mean, and he'd tell me the rain that him talking about is bullets. And the song was about bombs. The song was written after some world war, some world tragedy, and that is what it's referring to. So… Growing up in Greenwich Farm, in the ghetto, my experience of gunshot, all these things, and there was a time when my mother locked the gate and locked us in the house. I'm not gonna go out and play. So anytime a shot a fire, me tell myself, say, it's raining.

So I used to stand up wondering, when will the sun come out? You know? And when Jallanzo sent me the riddim I'm gonna send him back a demo… for my first verse now, I write it, if you notice, the tone of voice between the chorus and the verse is a different tone of voice, because it's really… Not saying that I have many personalities, you know, but it's really two different versions of me. It's like the child version of me singing the chorus, an adult me, you know, that is coming in saying, ‘living in the darkness too long. You're no longer human, disconnected from Earth’. I wanted somebody to feature on the song that would add to the message, or make it even clearer, and… I already had a song with Lanzo. I already had a song with my father on it. The perfect example of a father I could think of was Micah Shemaiah. So, I demo-ed the song on my phone, and sent it to Micah. And within a few hours, Micah sent me back him verse.

You're talking about two voices, at least, with your adult and your child voice. Then you have Micah's voice. ‘sun haffi deh-deh’ is, to me, the answer to the question, so it's a positive song, all in all.

Xana: Yes, Micah, Micah insists! I don't mean it in a bad way, I mean it in a good way. Like, when the song finish, who is singing in the background, the harmonies on the song is Jah’Mila Smith, that's Uncle [Earl] Chinna Smith daughter. So we recorded the harmonies for that. Jah’Mila was in Jamaica, and I sent her the song, and I tell her that I'm looking for people who are like family, you know, family-orientated – people [who] want to bring out this message. She was in Jamaica at the time, and she come up to record the background on it. I [call] Micah, and I say, ‘Well, Jah’Mila's here putting some background on’, and he's like, ‘Okay, I'm coming over there’, and he come and say, ‘I come here to tell you that I'm hearing something else on the track. Answer, answer to what you're saying…’ So, I think he was just making… [sings] na-na-na-na-na… first, and then get the word and say, ‘Yes, it haffi deh. Sun, haffi deh’… And it really elevates the song, bring out the message even more because when he says, ‘sun haffi deh’, I look upon the two sons. The sun above and the son of man.

Somewhere else you talk about the role of man being placed to look after the earth, the planet.

Xana: Oh, that was In The Beginning.

It's very biblical. To me, the whole album is biblical. It feels like it's trying to update the message from the bible.

Xana: I didn't write all the tracks on the album, like, sitting down with a whole formula, saying, ‘Alright, I'm gonna follow the story like this…’ but when I finished the album, it finished perfectly in line with the concept. If you open the book of Genesis, you will see that In The Beginning is the book of Genesis. So, when I started freestyling In The Beginning, I was just freestyling, because I have photographic memory when it comes to the Bible. So I was just going down through the first page. It is basically me using words from the Bible, codes from the Bible, using the Bible to remind people to unlock a memory, to let them know our purpose. What are we here for? Where are we coming from? The Divine Blueprint is… I tried it on Wake Up, and I tried it on The Roots of X, but me never really get it. With The Divine Blueprint, me really get just one thought together inna one album. And when I'm finished the track and I'm listening to it, I was like, wow, it tell a story. You understand? It wasn't intentional. I line it up after I did it, you know? So, yemman, it's just the divine blueprint. It's divine timing, divine everything, divine magic.

Jallanzo: Yeah. And, you know sometimes we would have, like, 20 songs or 25 songs and pick the album out of it? I think this time we make the exact amount of tracks that is on the album.

Xana: No song never get left off. Wake Up, song get left off. Roots of X, song get added on, but with the album, you had the same amount of song. The entire 2024, I didn't tour, I didn't do anything. I was just in a headspace of The Divine Blueprint. Everything that was going on in my life, everything that is on the album. I took a year off to put together an album, not just write one, but experience an album.

And Max's verse is a bible verse, right?

Xana: Yeah, when I started writing Over All, I actually write Over All to sing it with my father. It's a conversation between me and my father. It's things that me and my father talk about all the time. As I said, [I] start the song, ‘They poisoning the seas and tamper with the land, politicians playing God exercise power over man’. Is my father that taught me everything from history to politics to all these things. I develop my reasoning ability by reasoning with my father. So, when me finished writing my part for Over All, me left the space there for him… When him come inside the studio the morning, Debo recorded that song. You know, Debo, par with Kumar?

Debo Ras.

Xana: Yes, is him record daddy part for that song. That song recorded not long after Wickie Wackie [Kumar Fyah’s beach festival where Max Romeo headlined in February 2024], not long before my father passed away. When he came in the studio in the morning, I was on a video call with Jallanzo and him come in, and say, ‘You ready for me now, Debo?’ With him spliff inna him hand. Him say, ‘Wha you want me do now?’

Me say, ‘Whichever Bible verse you woulda want tell me right now, or say, in according to me… a it me want you put pon it.’ And him just put down him songbook and say, ‘Alright, me nuh need this then.’ And him just go in there, and him just start saying, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He madeth me to lie down in green pastures…’ And me think him a go continue but him say [singing] ‘I stand tall, after all.’ I said, ‘Yeah, most definitely’, ennuh? A one take him make and sing the song.

When him come back out of the studio Debo sit back in him chair and say him never see that yet. Jallanzo say, ‘You never see nothing yet. You want voice dubplate with Max. Fifty dubplate Max a lick, all just straight.

When I was by yours one time, your sister and I were walking by the cow field, she was like, ‘yeah, ennuh, Max say when him retire, him just want to sit and look upon him cow.’

Xana: Yeah, that's the reason why, exactly where I took my album photo… when my father sit in his bedroom, him looking straight on his cow. I stand right in the exact spot that him look every day, and that is where I take my album picture.

Your album cover responds to the title and the theme of the album. It shows your interpretation of it. How did you come up with the concept for the album cover, and who did you work with on that?

Xana: When I first decided to work on the album, and first decided to name it The Divine Blueprint, I guess I had the idea for the cover even before some of the songs on the album was made, because The Divine Blueprint, the title track, was the first song recorded from the album and it was even from there and then that I decided to make an album around that title. The Divine Blueprint, the title itself, means exactly what the cover is saying. The Black woman is the definition of the divine blueprint, and on the cover I feature my daughter. I originally wanted to feature my mother, myself and my daughter. But my mother wasn't available. There's a lot going on in her life now with the passing of my father…

I work with the same person that's been taking my pictures from the first release, which was Righteous Path. His name is Mickel Wright. He runs a photo studio here in Lindstead. We went to high school together. When I was younger, I wanted to be a photographer, and because of that, I have a lot of photographer friends now. It's the same team of people that worked on The Roots of X cover. Yeah, so, The Divine Blueprint is basically dedicated to all the mothers who have carried this lineage so far, to my mother, whose strength has shaped me, and to my daughter, the light which I pass forward. The idea for the cover, it was all me. I styled myself, but it was Mickel who bring my vision to life, just like how Jallanzo bring the music I hear in my head to life, you know?

I remember you once telling me that, when you were younger, you wanted to be a jockey.

Xana: When I was young, I wanted to be a jockey, but I found out very quickly that that wasn't gonna work out for me. I grew up watching a lot of Disney channel, and there was this movie about a girl who was a jockey. When I was a kid, I wanted to be something new every year, you know? There was one point I thought I would be a model, a jockey, tattoo artist... But since I was a kid, I always loved and somehow knew I would become a songwriter. Because I classify myself as a songwriter.

How does your son feel about your daughter featuring on the cover? Any sibling rivalry?

Xana: He was the one that was assisting the photographer on the day, bringing me water, and all of that. My son is fine, my son been onstage with my dad in Europe on tour saying, ‘Lucifer, son of the mourning!’ in front of thousands of people on big festivals.

Any chance of him following in musical footsteps?

Xana: Yemman, my son is playing the drums now. I'm not a drummer, but I can definitely see a lot of potential in him. Everybody in our family have musical bones but my son look like he's leaning more to be a musician. I don't know still, I'm not trying to pick for him or anything, but what I see him doing now is playing instruments, not necessarily writing and singing music, and I would love for my son to be a musician and form a band around him, ennuh? Yeah, it'd be amazing.

And I remember at your dad's 80th birthday the selecta put on a Xana Romeo song, and your likkle girl pop up and go, ‘that’s my mummy song!’

Xana: Yeah, my daughter know all the songs offa the album. Nuff time, I catch her just walking around singing them.

A few times observing Jallanzo dub mixing in the studio, he has his little girl there on his lap, and she's trying to sing before she can even talk...

Xana: Yeah, fi him dawta on another level. So multi-talented. Me woulda give her a full scholarship to Juilliard. She'll play a keyboard, she'll do all these things. She definitely has

Lanzo genes, 100%.

The album sounds like it's for two sets of ears. The first set is parents, and ‘parent’ can mean anything, anyone who's bringing forward the next generation. Then the other set of ears is children. And by that, I mean whoever is inheriting. One of the things that stands out to me is this preoccupation with what you are passing on. Can both of you describe what you want the music of the future to look like, and why?

Xana: I can't forget when I was in grade 8, and Vybz Kartel came out with the song, Nymphomania. I had no idea what the word nymphomania was. And I googled it, and right there and then, it's like, my consciousness elevated, because I said to myself, ‘Him telling me this word as a young girl. Me reading the definition, I can now decide if I want to be this thing or not. Why is he exposing me to this?’ And it's like, I just get a consciousness shift. From then on I'm saying to myself, ‘Well, music should not be like this’. You know, I'm not trying to say, ‘Oh, music is made to just be gospel and spiritual’. But music is an expression.

Jallanzo: Yeah, music in the future should be in its most authentic form. Not in the sense of, like, a big company or big management [but] just from the artists. Raw, artistic view. I think, especially in Jamaica, we should have more music education in the school. It should be a very important topic that is in every single school in Jamaica, not just to play instrument alone, but the knowledge of music, musicology and the topic around music. I think that is very lacking, especially in Jamaica. There's so much talent, but there's no knowledge of music and approach. I think we need to be taught a lot about the presentation. There need to be more infrastructure, musical infrastructure; more security for music, musicians.

There's no industry in Jamaica right now. There's a lot of musicians, and the Edna Manley [School of Art] musicians, a lot of them are coming out, some of them are just gonna be teaching, there's nothing, no plugs. Music is the number one export in Jamaica and Jamaica need to capitalize on that. Because, as you can see, as an example, Melissa. 90% of the musicians came out. They putting back, giving back in their community. Musicians are always known for that. So, I think, there should be some kind of priority for music. It is been put on the backburner too long.

What’s next?

Jallanzo: We can mention a little about the project that me and Scientist working on. It's a dub project, me and Scientist, teacher and student style, ennuh? I'm dubbing 5 tracks, and Scientist dubbing 5 tracks. Yeah, looking forward to that. I'm honored. I've been listening to Scientist since I was in the womb, so…

Xana: As you probably know, we did a tribute tour to our dad, kinda almost immediately after he passed this year, in honor of my father. I will be doing tours with Azizzi [Romeo], just as brother and sister. I was working on my album when my dad passed away, with the intention to do a promo tour for the album, and I already had that in effect when this tour with Azizzi started planning. The person planning the tour was interested in both of us, to do a tribute tour to our father. But, unfortunately, because I already started working on the Divine Blueprint tour, I had to commit to that, ennuh?