Ele wants $5m to clash with Flippa
Elephant Man says he is willing to clash Flippa Mafia at Sting if promoter Isaiah Laing is willing to pay him $5 million.
At the launch of Sting on Tuesday night, Laing said Elephant Man was running from a lyrical face-off with Flippa Mafia and, as a result the ‘Energy God’ would not be on the show.
Toots brings authentic sounds to Tahoe
Calling Toots Hibbert’s music old-school reggae would be an understatement.
He the inventor.
Toots and the Maytals 1968 song “Do the Reggay,” was the first time the word defining the style of music was used in a recording.
Keeping a band together for more than a decade is no easy feat – especially if the band is full time.
But for the past 15 years, the members of Baltimore reggae group Jah Works have made a living by grinding out gigs around the region and recording with other local groups. They have released 10 albums, which have sold close to 100,000 copies altogether, and performed more than 2,500 shows. Tomorrow, they’ll play Rams Head Live. Along the way, they have become fixtures in the area
Few Jamaicans chart in Japan, US and Europe signalling, as pundits suggest, that international reggae doesn’t need Jamaica.
The charts in Japan, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand, up to yesterday, had only one Jamaican-born artiste – Bob Marley – in the top ten. The US and France were also low at three and four Jamaicans charting respectively in those top ten charts.
Ky-Mani Marley gets personal in autobiography
Although he is the son of music royalty, Ky-Mani Marley says life has not always been a bed of roses. The 33-year-old singer/actor tells his story in Dear Dad, his autobiography to be released February 6.
Marley is best known for minor hit songs like Dear Dad and Warriors and roles in movies such as One Love, as well as starring in a hit reality show on Black Entertainment Television
(BET). But he says his childhood was difficult, even though his father was reggae superstar Bob Marley.
Beenie Man Dropped From Big Day Out
Jamaican dancehall MC Beenie Man has been dropped from the line-up of the Big Day Out Festival, which is due to begin touring Australia and New Zealand in January, after protests about homophobic lyrics penned by the performer.
Beenie Man, as we have reported before, has struggled to perform live in many countries in recent years, due to protests over the lyrics of a number of his tracks. One such track ‘Bad Man Chi Chi Man’ (chi chi being Jamaican slang for homosexual) calls for murder of gay DJs, while in ‘Han Up Deh’ he suggests hanging lesbians. However, the rapper has always defended his lyrics saying that they have been misunderstood.
The country’s reggae scene is thriving – and may finally be ready to hail its first star, writes Andrew Drever.
Australia has yet to enjoy the emergence of its first home-grown reggae star. But with the increasing popularity of roots, reggae, dub and dancehall sounds in this country – especially here in Melbourne – surely that isn’t too far away. Perhaps Melbourne’s premier female reggae-dancehall vocalist, Vida-Sunshyne, will be the first.
Echo Minott asks ‘What the Hell the Police Can Do?’
With a consistently high murder rate, guns coming in from Haiti on fast boats and a surprise police commissioner resignation, many a law-abiding Jamaican citizen may jut be asking, ‘What the hell the police can do?’
Doubtless many were asking the same thing in 1986. Then, though, it wasn’t only matters of murder and gun-running on their minds, but a wry take on domestic abuse. They had a hot new song on their lips, which they made the number-one song on the RJR charts for the year and number-two on JBC, and they have continued to chant along with Echo Minott, asking “What the hell the police can do?”
It has not been a good year for Jamaican pop music. Sales tracker, SoundScan, reports that music buyers in the United States showed little interest in what Jamaican artistes had to offer in 2009.
SoundScan has released sales figures to the end of October. It said, collectively, reggae/dancehall music sold just 502,171 units for the first 10 months of the year.
As if he hadn’t done enough performing of late, Eddy Grant is ready to roll once again
Reggae rocker Eddy Grant is preparing to go on the road – again. The veteran performer is no stranger to performing, having spent much of last year doing just that. (Appearances at the Glastonbury and Montreux Jazz festivals, and the Nelson Mandela birthday concert are just a few of his 2008 shows). And with a career that spans over four decades, the Electric Avenue hitmaker is obviously well-versed in the art of gigging.