VC. some of the best Jamaican music I have ever heard - I'm talkin' stuff from other artistes - I heard in the studio only, but never on the air or in public

"The thing has become too much about the punchline. We need more choice."

Never one to mince words, singer-songwriter VC's assessment of the current state of much of Jamaica's popular music is one that will resonate widely, or at least that is the hope.

"Why, for example, is it impossible for a DJ or a dancehall artiste to deliver a song that talks about him being vulnerable, or even confused? Everybody's rollin' deep with the bling and the cars and the liquor and the guns. Is reality dat?" he ends, rhetorically.

The public first got acquainted with his forthright yet impassioned take on life through the hit By His Deeds, which offered searing indictments of hypocrisy at many levels.
However, despite remaining active musically, the artiste was off the public radar for the last couple of years, a development, he says, which was not by choice.

"The success of By His Deeds was an anomaly," he says, "in that it basically bypassed all of the conventional 'channels' that one would expect. So when it blew up, those with the power over access to those channels basically decided history was not going to repeat itself. So we blithely put out a second single (the uplifting anthem Gwaan), not realising the walls were firmly in place. I talkin' bout some major stiflin'."

He adds "some of the best Jamaican music I have ever heard - I'm talkin' stuff from other artistes - I heard in the studio only, but never on the air or in public."

Undaunted, the artiste has returned with two new singles, through which he intends to get around or over those channels. Ruff Neck is a classic morality play that exposes the dark side of the increasingly glamourised criminal lifestyle, while Judgement Day is the closest thing there is to a By His Deeds sequel, though the perspectives are distinct enough.

Ruff Neck is accompanied by video shot as a result of a 'quirk-of-fate' meeting with Florida-based Jamaican Adrian Allen. It was filmed in the South-Florida ghetto of Belle Glade, where the Jamaican community is said to make up some 60% of the population.

The experience has spurred the artiste to become even more directly involved with the social causes he describes in his tunes, and at the recent launch of the single, he publicised his involvement with a group working in the volatile August Town community of St Andrew.

"My ultimate goal really is to help guide the people, the youth in particular, toward a better way of life and give them something they can relate and hold on to in my music, and in my own livity," he says. "The youth are being short-changed on so many levels, and I want to be a part of the process that brings that to an end."

But even though his mission is serious, he won't allow himself to be pigeonholed in terms of his expression. "There are guys that come to me and say 'I have a nice one-drop riddim for you', as if it's impossible for me to put across what I'm saying on a dancehall riddim. That kinda stereotype I not goin' join."

Nevertheless, he doesn't condemn the DJs wholesale. "If I could do what they do, maybe I would but I just don't have it in me. That's what allow them to make a livin' and once a man is doin' that it's hard to look on him and just tell him stop say dis, or stop say dat."

His message will, however, remain conscious, if cutting-edge. He plans a number of performances (he also played the Village's Tuesday Night Live recently), spread around smaller venues (a few bigger ones) across the island.
"Everybody talks about goin' on tour, goin' to New York and London and what have you, and that's great, but what about Jamaica?"

That way, we just might be able to expect some more varied 'punchlines' in the future.

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