Mek yuh laugh

I came across this commercial for Heineken (aka Dancehall's official beverage of choice from longtime) and it was just too funny not to share it with you all. So here it is, enjoy!

More Neptune madness...

I thought China Fabulous was the Paris Hilton of the Dancehall??



China Fabulous aka The Black Paris Hilton vs. Star Barbie

Sitings on Neptune

I came across this flyer from a party that was held last month and thought it was quite interesting. Dancehall celebrities have not only created flashy names for themselves that help to glamorize their image but some of them even try to emulate the images of American pop culture Celebs. However, Star Barbie in particular, also drew my attention because of her charitable work with "Butterfli Wings Foundation", a non-profit organization that helps with the educational financial needs for the children of Jamaica. Well done Star Barbie!!

Another Popular Cross-Over Term

Big up (noun) origin - Jamaican 1980s. singular and plural.

1. An expression of support or encouragement.
2. An expression of remembrance.

"I want to big up everyone who has shown me support over the years."
"Big up on that excellent performance"

by neochin Jun 17, 2004
Source: Urban Dictionary

Dem a Bleach! Still?

Blaming the bleacher
by Melville Cooke

Source: The Gleaner
published: Thursday | January 26, 2006




A young man in a skin-tight, long-sleeved white shirt and close-fitting jeans walked the rude boy walk in the opposite direction of the cars filled with people headed to work, school and such the like. His face was shining and many shades lighter than his hands; he looked very pleased with himself.

It was not, of course, the first time I had seen the 'Seaga face and PJ body', as one deejay put it, up close; and it was not the first time that I thought the bleacher is a glowing reflection of ourselves as a whole, whether we like it or not.

We must acknowledge, first of all, that people across all sectors of the society lighten their skins. It is not restricted to the poor ghetto dweller, as the stereotype of toothpaste concoctions would have us believe. The difference is that the skin bleacher who has access to more refined products is able to do it more gradually and evenly, hence less noticeably. Lightening the complexion over four weeks is a shocker; doing so over 12 months is almost unremarkable unless you have not seen the person over that length of time.

We should also realise that there is more than one way to bleach. There is also the reproductive method, in which people refuse to have children with someone whose complexion is as dark as or darker than theirs. They are, in fact, lightening their lineage, bleaching generation next, if you will.

Whatever the process and the eventual skin tone, the bleachers should be aware that there is one particular area of the body which the 'bleach cyaan reach'. Legend has it that the sun does not shine there either.


WHY THE DISLIKE

Still, instead of throwing barbs at the bleachers, we need to ask ourselves why such a high number of black Jamaicans, some dark and others not so dark, dislike themselves so much as to subject their faces to the equivalent of the National Works Agency workmen tearing the surface off the road through the Bog Walk gorge.

We have a tendency to reject and ridicule the most glaring representations of our national psyche and, much as the sexuality expressed in dancehall music is often criticised (yet the Gemini exotic club has expanded to Ocho Rios and Montego Bay), we do not acknowledge that the bleachers are us.

For is it not us whose eyes automatically flick towards the lightest person in the room? For is it not us who rush to pack the bags of the fair of skin at the supermarket? Is it not us whose voices transform when we speak to very light-skinned Jamaicans, in the courts and at the gas stations?

How can we blame the bleacher without blaming the preacher, who selects a hymn which asks 'are your garments spotless/are they white as snow/are you washed in the blood of the lamb?' How can we blame the bleacher without blaming the history teacher who starts the history of black people from slavery?

And how can we blame the bleacher without asking ourselves, and being very honest, would we notice them if their faces were not startlingly light?

Not just see them, but take notice.

It is often preferable to be an oddity than a nonentity.


Source: Daily Gleaner






At one time Bleaching or being The Brownin' was a big phenom within Dancehall culture, is it safe to say the madness has stopped? Or do you still see your one and two people with mix-matched extremities?

Shisha (Europe's Dancehall Queen 2007)

PASSA PASSA??

The 'Passa Passa' phenomenon
BALFORD HENRY, Observer writer
Friday, November 21, 2003



IT IS THE biggest thing happening on the streets of Kingston these days.

Alluring women from all over the Corporate Area, vendors strewn along the sidewalk hawking from food to "high grade", the safest, friendliest atmosphere one could imagine for an area which only two years earlier witnessed the mass killing of 25 civilians and two members of the security forces.
The line gets longer and longer at Passa Passa.

It is the corner of Bread Lane and Spanish Town Road, facing the recently built Tivoli Court on a Wednesday night when uptown and downtown dance-crazy fans meet for the weekly 'Passa Passa'.

The weekly sessions, created in the trend of predecessors like the Rae Town oldies sessions, only started on Ash Wednesday night this year, but has grown by leaps and bounds since then.
World record holder for the most wickets in Test cricket Courtney Walsh (right) chatting with Wee Pow of Stone Love at Passa Passa.

As youthful entrepreneur Oneil Miles, who started it using his sound system, Swatch International, as anchor sound admits, even he is surprised by the sudden success of the event.

He attributes the overwhelming success to BET doing a video shoot there featuring dancehall stars Mr Lex, Wayne Wonder, and American rap acts Capone and Noriega.
Newly elected deputy leader of the opposition Jamaica Labour Party, James Robertson (left) hangs out at Passa Passa with Saleem Lazarus.

"From there on it just grew bigger and bigger with people from uptown who saw it on BET joining those from downtown every week," Miles enthused.

"People from all over come. Dem park dem vehicle or dem bike or dem bicycle knowing that nobody will touch it. People wear any amount of jewellery without fear. So it's good. We showing the country that it can go on yah so, so it can go on anywhere else," reasoned Carlton "Popcorn" McBridge, an elder in the community who has been involved in promoting music and sports events for years.
Carlton 'Popcorn' McBridge, one of the regulars at Passa Passa. (Photos: Joseph Wellington)

"A man can mash a man pon him corn and him doan even pay him no mind."

The session has won the support of local cable stations like RE TV as well as mainstream television's TVJ, which have brought it to the people and helped to encourage its growth.

It even has the support of police Superintendent Harry Daley, who is in charge of the Denham Town station. Daley fully supports the intention of the project, which is to create a social meeting place for sometimes politically warring communities like Tivoli Gardens, Wilton Gardens (Rema), Arnett Gardens (Concrete Jungle) and Matthews Lane, as well as to inspire increased economic activity in the area.

The police's main worry is that the session goes on until daylight, sometimes until eight in the mornings, creating traffic problems on the busy Spanish Town Road.

"The police would prefer that we end it by 6:00 am, as there are complaints from the JUTC about buses not being able to use the road, but the people want it to go on forever," Miles explained.

Popcorn recounted only one major road mishap in the history of the session, when a man who was dancing in the streets jumped onto a woman's car bonnet. "We joined together and fixed it," he added.

"It is the biggest thing right now," said Delroy Thompson, who runs the One Love Studio in Tivoli Gardens. "Nothing is going on on a Wednesday uptown so everybody comes downtown."

The biggest mistake this writer made in doing this piece was going to 'Passa Passa' much too early. How early? 11:00 pm. It was a virtual ghost town, except for the people drinking beer inside Miles' Drugs Enterprise, an affiliate of Miles' drug store on West Queen Street, which is operated by Oneil's family. The crowd didn't start appearing until about 1:00 am and even at 4:00 am people were still arriving in droves.

As Oneil explained, this is a deliberate strategy. Since he couldn't afford the time to split the session into two nights -- oldies and dancehall -- they decided to do everything one night, Wednesday.

They chose Wednesday, because it was the only night nothing was going on around the Corporate Area. For example, Mondays were "Hot Mondays" for Fire Links, etcetera on Hagley Park Road and Tuesdays were Ladies Night at the Asylum.

After settling on Wednesday, Oneil committed Swatch to playing every week with special guest selectors, including Tony Matterhorn, Ricky Trooper and the Stone Love, Metromedia, Travellers and Jam Rock crews.

They decided to accommodate oldies music until 1:00 am featuring the effervescent Bop "Alonzo Hawk" Campbell. At one o'clock, the younger Swatch crew, featuring O'Neil, Nicholas Smith (Nico Skill), Carl Shelley (Maestro), who actually gave it the name 'Passa Passa', Oliver Hopeton (Moody Mash) and Richard Campbell (Little Richie), playing until dawn.

This is exactly what has led to the late hours. Older people come up to 1:00 am to hear Hawk's vintage records, while the teenagers start rolling in at 1:00-2:00 am to hear the latest dancehall.

In fact, the period between one o'clock and two o'clock is known as new music hour, when the selectors introduce the latest releases slated to make the local charts, and record producers line up to get some air time.

Things have now reached the stage where they are thinking of employing a team of hometown security personnel for safety as the lines stretch further and further down Spanish Town Road.

"You know Friday night was the first time I played in Rema for seven years," O'Neil said as he watched the proceedings.

"Only the police can mash dis up now," said one unnamed vendor who was among the dozens busy capturing some of the economic opportunities the sessions have triggered.

As Popcorn explained: "It is a chance for them to make a living and enjoy themselves at the same time."

But, most of all it is a chance for the rest of the society to see that communities like Tivoli Gardens, Denham Town, Arnett Gardens and Wilton Gardens, which are commonly referred to as being volatile can actually have fun and try to earn a dollar in peace and harmony and without a shred of political evidence.

Etymology of "biebifaada" and "biebimada"

Baby mama
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Baby mama (also baby-mama and baby-mother) is an African-American Vernacular English term used to describe a mother who is not married to her child's father. The term is included in the Oxford English Dictionary as baby-mama, where it is defined as, "the mother of a man's child, who is not his wife or (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner".[1]
The term originated in Jamaican Creole as baby-mother (pronounced "biebi madda"), with the first printed usage appearing in the Kingston newspaper the the Daily Gleaner in 1966.[1][2] Another Daily Gleaner use dates from November 21, 1989.[2] Peter L. Patrick, a linguistics professor who studies Jamaican English, has said of the terms baby-mother and baby-father, "[they] definitely imply there is not a marriage—not even a common-law marriage, but rather that the child is an 'outside' child".[1]
Baby-mother and baby-mama had entered wide use in American hip-hop lyrics by the mid-1990s.[1] The Outkast song "Ms. Jackson", released in 2000, was dedicated to "all the baby mamas' mamas". American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino released a song entitled "Baby Mama" in 2004. Planet Earth, an album by Prince released in 2007, featured a song called "Future Baby Mama".
Originally, the term was used by the fathers of children born out of wedlock to describe the mothers of their children, but the term is now in general use to describe any single mother. However, since entering currency in U.S. tabloids, the terms baby-mama and baby-daddy have even begun to be applied to married and engaged celebrities.[1]
[edit]References

^ a b c d e Turner, Julia. (May 7, 2006). "A Brief History of Baby-Daddies." Slate Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2006.
^ a b Patrick, Peter L. (1995). Some Recent Jamaican Creole Words. American Speech, 70(3), 227-264. Retrieved December 12, 2006.
Categories: Articles to be merged since March 2007 | Slang | African American culture | Jamaican culture | American English | Parenting