With the Jamaican general elections around the corner, the Members of Parliament (MPs) from both the People’s National Party (PNP) and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) have stepped up their game by adding dubplate style enhancements from Dancehall artistes to their campaign songs.
But the incarcerated King of Dancehall, Vybz Kartel, is not all pleased with this development and has sought to remind his fellow entertainers that Dancehall culture has been at odds with the political establishment on the island.
PNP MP for St. Ann South East, and general election campaign chief spokesperson, Lisa Hanna, seemed to have been the ‘trendsetter’ in this election cycle. Hanna launched her custom-made dubplate remix of Shenseea’s Trending Gal yesterday on her Instagram and Twitter pages.
The campaign song referenced “Lisa” throughout with slight modifications to the lyrics complete and sealed with a personal endorsement from Shenseea at the end saying, “Yuh done know this is your girl Shenseea representing for Lisa Hanna.”
MP for Central Manchester and former Minister of National Security, Peter Bunting, delivered his monster campaign banger with a dub from none other than vibes master Stylo G. Bunting loaded the track and video clip of himself vibing to Stylo G’s remix of his single Dumpling on Twitter yesterday evening with the caption, “@Stylog call seh di dub just reach.”
Similar to Lisa Hanna’s Trending Gyal dubplate, Bunting’s name is mentioned all the way through on a tweaked version of the track with the hook, “Bunting out and bad, stunting. Dem gyal a say him sweet like pumpkin true we coil thick like dumpling.”
There’s also a Brawl Out dubplate by Dovey Magnum for PNP’s Peter Phillips. Over to the JLP camp, MP for North West St. Andrew and Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr. Nigel Clarke added his endorsement dub from the 1Govament Boss, Jahvillani from his infamous Clarks Pon Foot single.
The 15-second video clip shows snippets of Clarke out in the field with Jahvillani introducing the Minister saying, “Hey, yuh see when yuh talk about Clarks, yuh haffi talk about Nigel Clarke,” while voicing on the single’s original riddim.
MP for South West St. Elizabeth and Minister of Industry, Commerce Agriculture and Fisheries, Floyd Green came through with his dub from the Up Top Boss, Teejay, with a remix from his single Owna Lane.
The Minister captioned his clip TL a sleep? #OwnaLane while in his campaign song, Teejay rallies several communities in Green’s precinct and then says, “Floyd Green dem rate yuh, nuh go roun him people … St. Elizabeth in a dem owna lane.”
His campaign song is a remix of Martin’s Big Big single, where the deejay hails the Senator, “Nesta ah general … Nesta yuh ah dads yuh nuh mi G,” and continues to render the lyrics of the track, which is originally about him (Martin) to emulate Nesta instead.
PNP West Portland Candidate and Queen’s Counsel, Valerie Neita- Robertson, quite aware of the trending dubplate-style campaign songs, came up empty-handed, but she did tweet a hilarious meme suggesting that she was contemplating her options – from among the Dancehall artistes she has represented as a lawyer.
“Me going through list of artists I have represented: Vybz Kartel, Dexta Daps, Aidonia, Ninjaman, Hmmmmm”, Valerie tweeted.
Interestingly, Vybz Kartel posted his disappointment about what has been unfolding with these artistes joining forces with politicians.
“Dancehall burn politics, now artistes doing dubs fi dem.smfh..me stop do conscious song bout ya.. a bay gun lyrics !! cause unuh beyond learning tpc!” he scolded on his IG Story.
Valerie Nieta-Robinson can certainly scratch the Worl’ Boss off her list!
Source: Dancehallmag
