Managing a Brand He Made Himself
The dancehall reggae artist Vybz Kartel. His new album, “Kingston Story,” will be released on Tuesday.
By ROB KENNER
Published: June 16, 2011
SHORTLY before 10 p.m. on the final night of Best of the Best, a reggae and hip-hop concert held over the Memorial Day weekend in Veterans Park in Miami, DJ Nuffy, the master of ceremonies, began to introduce the dancehall reggae artist Vybz Kartel. But Vybz Kartel wasn’t actually in the park, in Miami, or even in the United States. He was more than 500 miles away at Jamaica Jamaica, a fancy nightclub just outside Ocho Rios, because he has been denied a United States visa.
Niketa Thomas
In addition to his music Vybz Kartel said he is developing beverage and clothing brands.
“And now for your feature presentation, the biggest thing in Jamaica,” DJ Nuffy roared, adding “him look like Michael Jackson.” The sly remark — referring both to the artist’s enormous celebrity in the Caribbean diaspora and to his controversial practice of lightening his skin — drew laughter and mischievous cheers from the crowd of some 10,000 who stared intently at a screen on the stage where artists including DJ Khaled, Busta Rhymes and I-Octane had performed just moments before. “Let’s welcome via satellite, live to you, Vybz. Vybz. Vybz.”
The crowd shouted “Kartel” in unison as his image filled the screen. He wore a purple suit with a loosely knotted silk tie and button-down shirt, his pale brown tattooed face framed by aviator glasses and a mane of black hair extensions. “Yo, Miami, you know what time now?” he asked, checking his wristwatch as the stuttering digital beat for “Touch a Button,” his chest-thumping challenge to rivals, started to play. Before long Vybz Kartel’s rapid-fire flow had the audience spellbound.
Over the last few years Vybz Kartel (pronounced Vibes Cartel) has become the most talked about figure in dancehall, a genre that is to the roots reggae of Bob Marley as hip-hop is to R&B. More than any of his predecessors or his peers, Vybz Kartel understands that he is not just entertaining an audience but managing a global brand. At a time when major-label interest in the genre is at a low ebb, and most dancehall artists release a smattering of singles, he will drop a full album, “Kingston Story,” on Tuesday on the Brooklyn digital label Mixpak Records. Although there will be no P.R. blitz to push the work, Kartel, 35, is highly skilled at creating controversy and leveraging the media exposure into new opportunities. The secret of his success may be that Vybz Kartel doesn’t worry about conforming to expectations; he’d rather break the rules.
“Kartel has remixed the notion of what it means to be a dancehall star,” said the Jamaican novelist and essayist Colin Channer. “He’s a pop artist in the sense of somebody like Madonna or Lady Gaga, who are aware of how transforming their image makes them attractive to different segments of the public.”
When asked how he maintains his international notoriety while rarely leaving Jamaica, Vybz Kartel laughed and said, with his usual braggadocio, “We work with what we have, and we make miracles like Jesus.”
The satellite-feed performance is only the latest example of this artist’s innovative approach to advancing his career. “I feel very special,” Vybz Kartel said by phone two weeks after the performance. “A lot of artists don’t have any visa now, but I am the one they approached. The job was pulled off, and I was the first to do it.” (He said he had his United States visa taken away six years ago over what he calls “allegations”; United States officials are not required to explain the grounds for denial of a visa.)
But the show almost didn’t happen. A week before the concert Vybz Kartel’s longtime business partner, Corey Todd — an American businessman who formerly worked with the Pimp Juice drink brand owned by the rapper Nelly — gave a series of interviews on Jamaican television accusing Vybz Kartel of threatening his life. He publicly severed ties with Vybz Kartel, dissolving the ventures that the two had built together, including Street Vybz Rum and the popular Kingston night club the Building, where the satellite performance was supposed to have been staged. Two of Vybz Kartel’s top collaborators — the singer Jah Vinci and the producer Not Nice — also jumped ship with Mr. Todd.
“I didn’t threaten anybody,” Vybz Kartel responded. “That is definitely a lie, and we are going to pursue that matter in court.” No legal action had yet been taken.
Vybz Kartel (born Adidja Palmer) made his name through a prodigious output of music, flooding iTunes with two or three new releases each week, with songs like “Ramping Shop” and “Jeans & Fitted” becoming international hits on radio. “I’m the Jay-Z for Jamaica, don’t call me a faker,” he rhymed a few years ago.
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Like Jay-Z he is as much an entrepreneur as an artist. He said he is planning to release a book analyzing his lyrics, similar to Jay-Z’s best seller, “Decoded.” Vybz Kartel is constantly making headlines with his X-rated lyrics, his leaked sex tapes, his well-documented arrests and for lightening his complexion in a culture with a long tradition of black pride. The skin-bleaching brouhaha is an enlightening case study.
“How you going to liberate the black people when you bleach out your skin?” asked Vybz Kartel’s erstwhile mentor Bounty Killer, voicing a widely repeated question. “You’re supposed to be proud to be a black man.”
In February the New York radio D.J. Dubmaster Chris of 93.5 FM banned Vybz Kartel’s music on his show during Black History Month. “If you don’t stand for something,” he said, “you’ll fall for anything.”
But Vybz Kartel parlayed the publicity into his first-ever live morning show interview on Hot 97 FM, one of the most influential hip-hop radio stations in America. “This music stuff — what people say about me good or bad — I don’t take it personally,” Vybz Kartel explained later. “It’s business.”
While working on “Kingston Story” the producer, Dre Skull, said he saw firsthand how Vybz Kartel took care of his business. Most of the album was recorded in Not Nice’s bedroom studio during a series of four one-night sessions. “One of the most exciting things about this record is that we did it with no A&R’s, no outside songwriters and no other producers,” said Dre Skull, who runs Mixpak from his apartment in Brooklyn.
Dre Skull was also impressed with how prolific a songwriter Vybz Kartel is. “Your average U.S. artist might do 300 songs over the course of a really successful career,” he said. “Kartel must have written three or four thousand songs, if you add it all up. The man is a master of his craft.”
Mr. Channer, who organizes the annual Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica, agrees. “Kartel is one of the best writers in any form to come out of Jamaica in the last 15 years,” he said. “It’s just that he likes to write about nothing but sex and guns.”
Vybz Kartel recently announced that he would no longer record songs with violent lyrics in favor of “more cultural” fare but added that explicit sex, as with the new album’s “Go Go Wine” remained fair game.
He got his break in the late 1990s writing hits for Bounty Killer, one of the most popular dancehall artists of the last decade. He rose to prominence as a performer in 2003 with the song “New Millennium,” which featured his trademark intricately constructed polysyllabic rhymes delivered in densely coded patois — the diametric opposite of mainstream hits. His career has been marked by run-ins with the law. Last July he was detained by the police as “a person of major interest” shortly before the accused drug lord Christopher Coke was extradited to the United States where he is now on trial.
“Why was I in jail?” he asked. “They said I was a gang leader. It was ludicrous. And I don’t mean the rapper.”
But there is no doubt that he exerts a powerful influence over his listeners. His 2010 hit “Clarks,” he said, offers proof of his clout in the global marketplace. The catchy song about the storied British shoe brand — long a staple among dancehall fashionistas — received worldwide airplay, sparking a rush on Clarks retailers in Jamaica and elsewhere. This month the company announced a 19 percent uptick in sales in the United States last year, pushing profits past £100 million (about $164 million) for the first time in its 186-year history.
“Those Clarks people, they are like me, they know how to capitalize on what’s happening,” Vybz Kartel said. “That’s why I decided to come with my own shoe line. ’Cause I got a knack for making things move off the shelf.” Although his rum and condom lines have been discontinued, he said he’s developing new beverage and clothing brands.
Meanwhile he said his line of “cake soap” — a detergent usually used for laundry — is selling briskly. “When people were talking about whether I bleached my skin, I made a joke that I used cake soap,” he explained. “I made some songs about it, and cake soap started to sell like hot bread in Jamaica.” Recognizing an opportunity he rushed his own brand of cake soap to market.
Mr. Channer, the novelist, likens Vybz Kartel to Anansi, the trickster character of Afro-Caribbean folklore. “Many cultures have a trickster figure,” he said. “The trickster finds a way to get something when there seems to be nothing.”
Throughout the controversies, Vybz Kartel seems to be enjoying a laugh as well as a tidy profit. “It’s fun for me to watch people hate me, and it’s flattering to watch people love me,” he said. “But 10 years from now the public is going to love somebody else. Vybz Kartel is going to become irrelevant, and I can accept that. That’s why a lot of artists are bitter, ’cause they can’t accept that. Get over it. Stop trying to be Kartel. You can’t. It’s all about making that money while I’m in the limelight.”
GOODMORNING-WHAT HAPPENS AT DEATH
What Happens at Death
as we all know, sooner or later, every single one of us is going to die and cross over to the other side. As Christians, there is a bit of a divide as to exactly what occurs at death. I will use this article, along with the appropriate verses from Scripture, to fully explain to you exactly what occurs at the moment we die and depart from this world.
The first thing you need to know is that there was a major difference as to what occurred at death in the Old Testament as versus what occurs at death in the New Testament. I will first breakdown what occurred to people when they died in the Old Testament, and then what happens to everyone who dies in the New Testament.
1. Old Testament
In the Old Testament when people died, they were not allowed to enter into heaven because Jesus had not come yet to die on the cross for all of their sins. God the Father obviously could not throw all of the good and righteous people into hell, so what He did with them, until Jesus could come down and set them free through His death on the cross, was to put all of them in a place called “Abraham’s bosom.”
The people who were not good and righteous, who were bad and evil and who could not live proper, righteous lives before the Lord, these people were then thrown directly into hell. We just put up a new article titled, “The Reality of Hell.” In this article are 47 of the best verses in the Bible showing you that not only does a hell exist and that it will be for all of eternity, but that all of the unrighteous people were immediately thrown down in there back in the Old Testament, even though Jesus had not come yet to die on the cross for all of their sins.
Then after Jesus had fully completed His sacrifice on the cross for all of us, these bad and unrighteous people were still not allowed to come out of hell to be able to go to heaven, as all of their judgments were final. Only the good and righteous people in Abraham’s bosom were allowed to go up into heaven after Jesus had paid the price for them with His sacrificial death on the cross. In other words, God was already separating the good apples from the bad apples even back in the Old Testament.
Here is the verse that gives us perfect revelation on this entire scenario. The subtitle of this passage is “The Rich Man and Lazarus.”
“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.
And being in torments in Hades (Hell), he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ But Abraham said, “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’
Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham said to him, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to them, ‘If they did not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:19-31)
Notice that Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom and that he immediately went there right after he had died and crossed over. However, the rich man immediately went down into hell due to the type of bad lifestyle that he must have lived.
Then notice what happens next – the people in hell could not cross over and reach the people who were in Abraham’s bosom due to a “great gulf” that separated these two places from one another. And Lazarus likewise could not cross over to try and reach the rich man who was burning in hell due to this great divide that was separating these two places from one another.
This great gulf that was separating these two places from one another was telling you something right off the bat – and that was the people who were in hell would now be down in there for all of eternity with no chance of ever being able to make it back out again – and the people who were in Abraham’s bosom would be getting out of there as soon as Jesus comes down and goes to the cross for all of them.
Now here is the verse that will show you that all of the people in Abraham’s bosom were immediately allowed to enter into heaven after Jesus pays the price for all of them with His sacrificial death on the cross:
“Jesus, when He had cried out again with a loud voice, yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” (Matthew 27:50-53)
Now that Jesus has already died on the cross for all of us, this will now take us into current New Testament times, which we are now all living in.
2. New Testament
Now here is where there is a bit of a divide between some in the Body of Christ as to what happens to all believers when they die and cross over.
Some Christians believe in something called “soul sleep.” This is a belief that when we die, our soul will go into an actual state of rest and unconsciousness until the time of our bodily resurrection, which will be explained below. And until that event occurs, all of the “dead in Christ” are now in some type of unconscious, sleep-rest state.
For the record, we do not believe or ascribe to this theory. The reason being is that there is one verse in particular that completely discredits this theory. Here is the verse:
Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, TODAY you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43)
Notice that Jesus tells the thief next to Him on the cross that he will be with Him in Paradise that very day after they both die together, not sometime far off in the future when He comes back for His church. If the soul sleep theory was correct, then God the Father would not be making an exception for this thief on the cross next to Jesus.
When Jesus makes this statement to this man, I believe this statement applies to every single believer in Him from that moment on – which means that when we all die, we will immediately be granted entrance into heaven to be with Jesus on the very day that we die, not sometime far off in the future when our physical bodies are fully resurrected by the Lord.
The apostle Paul also makes an additional statement on this issue. He says that to be “absent from the body” is to be present with the Lord. And once you die, your soul and your spirit will immediately become absent from your body. And according to Paul, once your soul and spirit becomes absent from your body, then you will immediately be allowed to come into the presence of Jesus in heaven, not at some far off time in the future.
Here is the verse from Paul making this specific statement to all of us:
“Therefore we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:6-8)
In this verse, Paul is definitely tying in the fact that we are in the presence of Jesus once we are absent from our bodies. And the only way that we can be absent from our bodies is if we literally die, at which time our soul and our spirit will then ascend up into heaven to be with Jesus for all of eternity. There is no other way that this can happen. And if we are in the presence of Jesus immediately after our deaths and departure from this world, then there is no room or possibility for any type of soul sleep to be occurring with our souls and our spirits.
3. Resurrection of the Body
The apostle Paul tells us that we have three distinct parts to our actual beings – a body, soul and spirit. Here is the verse giving us this specific revelation:
“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)
What happens when we die now is that our soul and our spirit will lift up together out of our physical bodies and then ascend up into heaven. Our natural, physical bodies are then left temporarily behind to rot and perish on the earth.
Paul tells us that we now have two types of bodies – a natural body and a spiritual body. Our natural body is obviously our human, flesh, physical body, but our spiritual body right now is our soul and spirit united together. In other words, the saints who are now living in heaven are in their spirit bodies, since their natural bodies are still lying down here on this earth in a corruptible state.
But at a later date at Jesus’ second coming back to our earth, God is going to fully resurrect all of our physical bodies just like He did with Jesus on that third day from His death on the cross. On the third day after Jesus died on the cross, His soul and spirit were reunited with His physical body and then God fully resurrects His physical body. But there is now one major difference with His fully resurrected body – it is no longer a natural body, it is now a new, glorified, spiritual body. A transformation has now taken place, and we as Christians are going to have the exact same thing happen to all of us.
God is going to fully resurrect our physical bodies from this earth and then transform them into new, glorified, spiritual bodies. When that occurs, our souls and our spirits will then be reunited and put back into this new spiritual body, and this new glorified, spiritual body will then be the one that we will live with for all of eternity.
Here is the specific verse that is telling us that our physical bodies will be raised up and transformed into new, glorified, spiritual bodies at the second coming of Jesus.
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” (1 Corinthians 15:44)
Notice this verse says that we are all born with a natural body, which is our human physical body, but that same body will then be raised up and fully resurrected as a new, glorified, spiritual body just like God did with Jesus. So in one simple little verse, Paul gives us complete and full revelation as to exactly what is going to happen to all of our bodies at the second coming of Jesus back to our earth.
And these new, glorified, spiritual bodies will also no longer age, deteriorate, or corrupt – ever again! They will no longer ever get sick again. Notice in the above verse it says that our bodies were initially sown in “corruption” and “weakness,” but that they will be raised in “incorruption.” This means that our new bodies will be imperishable, immortal and indestructible.
These new resurrected, spiritual bodies will also be capable of eating foods, as the Bible tells us that Jesus ate food with the apostles in His new glorified, spiritual body before He ascended to the Father. Here is the verse showing that Jesus was able to literally eat food with the apostles after He had already resurrected from the grave:
But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them, “Have you any food here?” So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. And He took it and ate in their presence.” (Luke 24:41-43)
Even though our new bodies will be spiritual bodies, they will also still have actual flesh and bone to them, which means that we will still be able to feel and touch things as we do now. Here is another verse where Jesus is specifically making the statement that His new, glorified, spiritual body is still a physical body that has actual flesh and bone in it:
“Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” (Luke 24:39)
Though we are being given these new spiritual bodies, these new bodies will not be immaterial or ghost-like, like what we think about when we think of the word “spiritual.” These will be physical, flesh-and-bone bodies that will be capable of eating, feeling, touching, and smelling, but with a spiritual component and makeup to them that will literally make them indestructible, incorruptible, and immortal.
Also notice that just as God made Jesus wait for three days before He fully resurrected and transformed His earthly, natural body into a new, glorified, spiritual body, in the same way we all have to wait for a certain number of years before our physical bodies are fully resurrected and transformed into the same kind of new, glorified, spiritual body that Jesus now has.
We do not get these new, glorified, spiritual bodies at the time we die and depart from this earth. These new spiritual bodies will be given to us when Jesus returns back to us in His second coming, not at the time we die and leave this world. Here is the verse that specifically tells us this:
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
We also believe that this is verse of the rapture. If it is, notice that the “dead in Christ” will rise first. If the dead are already in heaven, then what is going to rise? If will be the resurrection of their physical bodies from the grave. In other words, all of the saints who are now living in heaven will receive their new, glorified, spiritual bodies right before the rapture occurs.
And then once this event has occurred with the saints who are up in heaven, then the saints who are still alive and down here on this earth at the time of the rapture will not have to go through any type of physical death. Once the rapture actually occurs, their natural, physical bodies will then be immediately and instantaneously transformed into their new glorified, spiritual bodies.
This means that all of the saints who have died and who are now living up in heaven with Jesus are still waiting for their new resurrected spiritual bodies to be given to them by the Lord.
CONCLUSION
In 9 very powerful and direct verses from our Bible, God has given us very good and powerful revelation as to what is going to happen to all of us and our physical bodies after we die and depart from this earth. Again, here is exactly what is going to occur to every single believer in Christ at the moment of their deaths upon this earth:
1. At the moment of our deaths upon this earth, our souls and our spirits will lift up from our physical bodies and immediately be granted entrance into heaven. We will then be in our spirit bodies when we initially enter into heaven.
2. But then at the second coming of Jesus back to our earth, and possibly right at the time of the rapture, all of the saints in heaven will then have their physical bodies fully resurrected and then transformed into brand new, glorified, spiritual bodies.
These new spiritual bodies will still be physical, flesh-and-bone type bodies, but they will have a spiritual component and makeup to them that will now make them totally immortal, indestructible, and incorruptible.
In other words, we will all be given brand new, physical, flesh-and-bone, glorified, spiritual bodies that will last for all of eternity. These new bodies will never age, corrupt, die, or ever get sick on us – ever again!
And if anyone down here has bodies that are deformed, scarred, or disabled in any way, they will all be made completely whole again once they receive their brand new, fully resurrected, spiritual bodies from the Lord.
With the flawed and imperfect bodies that we are now forced to live and work in on this earth, we will really be able to appreciate these new glorified, spiritual bodies once they have been given to us by the Lord. What a relief it is going to be to think that these brand new spiritual bodies will never age, wear out, or ever get sick on us ever again! And this will be for all of eternity!
What more can you say on how good and great our Lord is with the final ending and final chapters that He has already prepared for all of us with these brand new glorified, spiritual bodies that will be given to all of us, not to mention the New Heaven and the New Earth that we will all be given as our final resting place in the Lord.
MOVADO TALK BOUT DI INCIDENT
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