Ramping Shop

Ok this aint no Easter post!

Now nuff words have been said about the banning of Ramping Shop and other songs of its ilk by the Jamaican authorities. Although I have a view, I wont weigh in here on whether it was right or wrong cause some will argue society echoing art and others art echoing society, is a chicken or egg dilemma and too much interaction between the two for me to win an argument on that in a lil 200 word blog.

Now I hear the Ramping shop song a few times cause it been on the mixes for a few good months but I really aint pay much attention to anything besides the riddim. That was until this past weekend where I was walking around with the ipod and the song came on and I finally listened closely to the lyrics and realized how slack they were. I mean yea I've heard worse in my day but still ya cant consider this song decent nuhway ya look at it. Dem people was talkin bout some things dat turn mi head boy! Wha, I even had to google some of them lyrics to figure out what them was talking bout.

But one particular lyric in that song had me. It was the line Vybz uses about "Deal wid yuh breast like mi crushing irish". Potatoes I assume. Actually it reminded me of the Mavado "squeeze her breasts like the trigger of my gun" lyric from another dancehall song. So I stop in my tracks and was there visualizing some fella with a potato masher or a fork in he hand and he mashing way hard hard hard on the poor woman's boobs or another fella squeezing breasts like he is a shotta in a Die Hard II or Terminator movie and wondering if while he squeezing he duz stay low and keep firing, whether he shooting a regular handgun or a semi automatic and whether he duz dive bout like dem fellas in the movies while still shooting cause damn that sounds like some serious pain infliction to me. Ouch! And I was wondering but is how dat could be pleasurable to either party involved? Wha dat doan mek nuh sense. Wuhloss !

But that one line was an eyeopener for me. I mean I been listening to dancehall from since Yellowman and Lovindeer was running tings and it never really hit home for me until now. I mean I know the music is misogynistic an all but still something dawned on me that I hadn't considered before.

Ya ever notice that sex in dancehall songs doan sound pleasant at all? It duz sound like war and violence, murda in de market like somebody getting beat kill. I mean if I personally was an alien from another planet (and I not confirming that I am or am not) and my first introduction to Jamaica was via current dancehall music my first thought would be that sex in Jamaica is something akin to an ancient gladiator brawl or the WWF with all these wicked slams and that Jamaican women quite frankly must long time ago either have invested in full body armour for sex or are alternately all dead from being "killed with it" or are walking around crippled or handicapped from the nuff bruises, broken limbs and war wounds which are sure to have been inflicted courtesy of all the stabbing, jukking and daggering that duz be going on in songs. I mean 100 juks, 1000 stabs, wha ya cant pass that off as manslaughter no way ya look at it. Something so could only be premeditated murder in the first degree to me.

And then I was reading a ting on the Nation website yesterday and realize well is not only women suffering from this daggering thing cause according to them lately penises in Jamaica breaking rather fracturing at a record rate. Apparently all the daggering and juks and stabs backfiring and fellas getting wounded. Well a so it a go I guess.

Cuhdear!

Still all I saying again is if you follow dem dancehall fellas you cud only find yaself in trouble. All them juks and stabs somebody gotta get hurt and that is my perspective whether i is an alien or not.