Sean Paul is lashing out on the ‘slavery mentality’ among artistes in Dancehall’s clash culture as the industry is filled with hypocrisy, disunity, and lack of positivity.
“The movie Django reminds me of our clash culture. Two youths fight, and then a guy gives one the hammer and says finish him”, the Grammy-winning artiste said during an interview with DJ Epps interview. “That reminds me of clash. I don’t like that. If we perpetuate it year after year to these kids, they are going to come up and do the same thing. Since slavery, we have been put up against ourselves, and we shouldn’t be doing that”.
Sean Paul whose decorated international career excludes cutthroat stage antics as seen at the at the once annual Sting stage show and controversy, which he believe is crippling the industry.
“The statement I made to DJ Epps is really heartfelt. I carried that feeling about our clash culture for a long time, but not knowing what exactly to say about it or how to say it and the time to say it,” SP told The Sunday Gleaner in a follow-up interview. “Why do we, when bigging up one person, have to deny the other of their glory? It’s divide and rule. It’s very crab in a barrel”, he added.
“As Capleton seh, music is a mission, not a competition. There shouldn’t be the arrogance of ‘I am the best’ because we are all good at what we do. We are such a powerful force, yet so divided, that it leaves this big space. Instead, we are here squabbling among each other, so [internationally] they say, ‘This is good. Let’s take it.’”
Sean Paul called out Sting for enabling a ‘slavery mentality’ among Dancehall entertainers.
“Every year in Jamaica, we grew up with Sting. The basis of the entire show was to clash each other and do the most hard-core performance. This is slavery mentality to me, and I just don’t want to do that. In our culture, we had Shabba and Ninjaman clash and Ninjaman and Super Cat, and I was a fan of all those people. I see people in the street who seh that Shabba badder and stab up each other over it. I don’t want to see none of that. The black, gold, and green, those are my colours,” the singer told DJ Epps.
In acknowledging that there is both good and bad in the clash culture, Paul told the Gleaner, “As I said in the interview, we all have benefitted from clash culture. It helps everybody – the selectors who clash, upcoming artistes who learn from the mistakes others might make, or the triumphs he sees, the same artistes who are clashing. It sharpens us a lot and makes us very potent and very creative emcees and musicians.”
