Jamaican Reggae’s Rude Boys Go to War

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Beenie vs. Bounty began in ’93 when the two sparred verbally at the Stone Love anniversary dance, and escalated with
a clash at the Sting music festival. After a decade of conflict, Bounty Killer brought the feud to the pseudo-corporate level when he assembled a sort of deejay gang called the Alliance. The Alliance began monopolizing riddims, producers, selectors, and venues. Ninjaman, Bounty’s former mentor, was an outspoken critic. He challenged Alliance members to battles, threatening to “kill” them. Bounty’s protégé Kartel accepted, and the whole thing came to a head, son vs. granddaddy, at the Boxing Day fight.

This fight was more than just a turning point in the history of feuds: The threats and name-calling, once laughed off as talk, became windows into real-life violence. Cultural problems moved from the dark corners of shantytowns onto the public stage. Jamaica’s most notable export—music—was exposing the country’s nasty underbelly. The industry began to respond. Sting pledged to weed out homophobic lyrics; selectors started refusing to play vicious music; and the island of St. Vincent banned a new übergangsta deejay as a “potentially damaging influence on the island’s youth.”

Not that any of this makes a difference: The warring attracts as many people as it repels, and so the feuding musicians continue to outdo themselves. Months ago, a knife fight between two deejays broke out onstage in Florida. A gang of rival fans recently attacked Kartel in Jamaica. The line between stage and street has faded away. In the earliest feuds, deejays fought in front of audiences, then turned around and clinked Red Stripes. Now, when a deejay sings “diss me and we take away ya life,” he’s not trying to entertain. He’s issuing a warning.

Excerpted from The Believer (July-Aug. 2009), a literary and musically minded magazine of essays, interviews, and schemata, published by McSweeney’s in San Francisco. www.believermag.com 

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