DEEJAY Bounty Killer has released an anti-bleaching single seen arguably as blasting his former protégé Vybz Kartel.
No Cream To Mi Face, calls no names but explicitly denounces skin bleaching which is in opposition to Kartel's lyrical and personal endorsement.
The leaked song represents the lyrical crescendo of Killer's known opposition to Kartel's bleaching. The song is a buzz on the Internet with listeners posting opinions on its implication to the Kartel and Killer divide. To date Kartel has refrained from lyrically responding to Killer.
The song's introduction states: "Some boy a bubble/ try get pretty like dem a super model/ you can imagine what dem a goggle/ bad man no saddle."
The chorus states: "No cream on mi face/ mi pants to mi waist/ bad man tongue no bore/ mi no Evitt and Grace/ mi straight from mi eyeglass to mi shoes lace/ certain guy can't come pon di bass (base)."
The outro states: "No fruity guy/ dem a get crucify/ a mi guns mi a beautify/ girlish behaviour/ you better call up the saviour."
In 2006, Kartel left the Alliance which is an artiste's crew led by Bounty Killer. Kartel reportedly stated that his career suffered under the control of Killer. Kartel then started Gaza, his own artiste's crew, but recently it too encountered a similar fragmentation.
Bounty Killer is one of at least four artistes who have lyrically or publicly opposed skin bleaching in recent months. Recently, singer Tarrus Riley said that Jamaicans who justified bleaching were mentally enslaved. Riley however, steered his comments away from Kartel. Riley was one of three panellists including Mutabaruka and Omar Abdullah Johnson the great-great-great-great grand nephew of US scholar Fredrick Douglass, at the recent discussion entitled Shaka Zulu Pickney at the University of West Indies (UWI). It was the final in a three-part lecture series on bleaching produced by the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at UWI.
Kartel defended his bleaching in another UWI lecture series in March. He claimed that no one ever died from skin bleaching. Just this year, however, a female reportedly died in Thailand as a result of an allergic reaction from the chemicals in a skin bleaching cream.
Contextually, Kartel ignited a firestorm and multiple musical counteractions, when he claimed in an earlier interview that his use of cake soap (a bar of laundry detergent) and air conditioning resulted in his noticeably lighter complexion. Cake soap was initially referenced in his track Straight Jeans and Fitted. He subsequently released, Cake Soap for which a video was shot. Later he admitted that another substance bleached his skin and not cake soap.
