Beenie Man open to exclusive Billboard Magazine cover
Dancehall deejay Beenie Man is open to receiving a front page feature from Billboard Magazine, as an apology for the publication excluding him and Bounty Killer from the cover of a recent issue which highlighted the Verzuz brand. Both entertainers
During a recent interview on Fox
Soul’s Out Loud With Claudia Johnson,the host suggested that the magazine give the deejays their own cover story.Beenie Man agreed.
“That’s what I want,” he said. “I
will never tell a person how to run their publication…but if you have a
chance to give us that respect and you take back that respect from us it’s like
you try to give us life five weeks ago and then you suck it out back. It’s not
a good feeling and I don’t feel that anybody who love and respect and listen to
dancehall music feel good about it. It wasn’t right to snap us from that cover,
we deserve that cover.”
The magazine had done its usual
scoreboard story for their battle on May 23, as they have done with every other
face-off. They followed up with another story on May 29 about the increased
streaming of Beenie Man and Bounty Killer’s music since the showdown.
The Girls Dem Sugar deejay is disheartened that dancehall music does
not get all the acknowledgment it deserves, and gave his reasons for this.
“I think it’s because it’s not
American,” he started. “Jamaica is a powerful little island. We got the fastest
man in the world, we gave you Bob Marley, we gave you reggae music, now here
comes dancehall music. I don’t think they agree with us for Bob Marley to be
number one on iTunes from iTunes open until now. You can only move him off the
spot for a minute and then Bob is back at number one again. I think the music
is too influential and the powers that be is trying to hold back the music, and
they’ve been trying to do it from the 80s, from Shabba Ranks to me right now…”
He added that the genre has also
contributed to the success of many American entertainers.
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[naviga:li]Related story:
Fans protest after Beenie Man, Bounty Killer are overlooked for Billboard ‘Verzuz’ cover[/naviga:li][/naviga:ul]
“We have made a lot of hip hop
artistes rich, we’ve made a lot of pop artistes rich, we’ve made a lot of
American artistes big internationally because of reggae (and) dancehall music,
it’s just for you to give us a chance. Even the African dem come with dancehall
and you play them more than dancehall music and it’s crazy but we can’t cuss
Africa because Africa is where the beat is from, it’s where we get our drum
from… We’re not a threat to nobody, we’re just here to entertain the world so
you should give us a chance to entertain the world and let the world know us…”