Adidja palmer biography of mahatma gandhi

“Him Chuck Me First.”

On Boxing Day—December 26, 2003—just as the sun was rising over the town ofPortmore, Jamaica, the dancehall deejay known asVybz Kartel (a.k.a. Adidja Palmer) took the stage at Jamaica’s legendary Sting music festival. The annual concert, widely promoted as “The Greatest One-Night Reggae Show on Earth,” usually includes the most visible artists in dancehall music, and has developed a reputation for hosting infamous onstage clashes between feuding deejays (a term in reggae which refers not to “disc jockeys” but to MCs).

His entourage surrounding him, Kartel dropped maniacal taunts about “wartime” and how “lyrics win war.” Halfway into his set, he launched into the hits: “Gun Clown” and “Buss Mi Gun Like Nutten,” hype tracks that spout the same ­brutal lyrics popularized by gangsta rap. But Kartel’s songs weren’t just vague anthems to violence; they were weapons aimed directly at Kartel’s rival, Ninjaman (a.k.a. Desmond Ballentine), a senior deejay known for his criminal record and a history of onstage clashes. Kartel called Ninjaman a crackhead, dug into him about some sexual-abuse allegations (“Him say him a bad man and a beat up woman and baby.Then if you beat up lady, that mean to say you a lady bad man and if you beat up baby that means you a baby bad man”), and then accused him of sodomy.

Ninjaman took the stage wearing a graduation cap and gown (a visual jab about being in a higher “class” of deejay than Kartel). But Kartel was a local favorite, and after his strategic set of hits mixed with cheer-­induced disses, he’d pulled the twenty thousand fans to his side. Ninjaman gave it his best shot, but after a minute of booing and bottle-­flinging, Kartel returned to the stage.

Then something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen: Ninjaman gave Kartel a hard shove on the shoulder—though differing accounts dispute who shoved whom first. (Ninjaman claimed, “Him chuck mi first, mi chuck him back.”) Within a few seconds a fistfight was un

Often in the course of his prolonged trial I found myself wondering if the rollercoaster life of Adidja Palmer aka Vybz Kartel was scripted by someone channeling Breaking Bad, the wildly popular American TV series about the rise and fall of a chemistry teacher turned meth dealer.  By the time the trial ended I knew it was nothing of the sort, just another wickedly original Jamaican libretto. Described by some as the country’s pre-eminent lyricist, for more than a decade Kartel ruled the roost in Jamaica as its reigning dancehall deejay (”a genre that is to the roots reggae of Bob Marley as hip-hop is to R&B”), his street cred extending far beyond Kingston, into the nooks and crannies of ghettoes all over the Caribbean, into urban America and as far away as Africa where his Gaza Empire has spawned copycats.

By late 2013 Vybz Kartel, 38, was being portrayed by the police and the justice system as Public Enemy No. 1. His fame and fortune notwithstanding, on April 3, 2014, Adidja Palmer was sentenced to life in prison with no parole possible before 35 years, after the court gave itself an extra week to determine whether the embattled DJ should be allowed to make music while incarcerated.  He had been found guilty almost 3 weeks earlier, along with three others, of the murder of one Clive ‘Lizard’ Williams, a dancer and foot soldier in the small army of roughly 30 men that constituted Vybz Kartel’s entourage. These men ensured that Kartel’’s interests were looked after and his bidding done at all times.

Courtroom runnings

It was a dramatic trial with twists and turns that kept the nation in suspense till the very end. As the Prosecution laid it out, Lizard ran afoul of the popular deejay because he and Chow, another member of the entourage, were given two of Kartel’s (illegal) guns, then failed to produce them when asked for their return.  After several futile attempts to get the guns back, Lizard and Chow were summoned to Kartel’s house where the

The poem below is by the great Caribbean poet Kamau Brathwaite…he sent it by email, subject line: Oriki for Mandela, and asked that it be circulated. “Less we feget and b4 we feget as w/so many others. . . Pl pass it on as if it was a mural <<Kamau>>” NB: The photo was included with the poem.

One of the most interesting articles on Nelson Mandela is written by my friend Achal Prabhala, who restores some flesh and blood to what is otherwise rapidly developing into a cardboard cutout of the global hero:

Prison did not diminish Mandela’s keen interest in the body. When his daughter Zindzi expressed hesitation at attending her sister Zenani’s wedding—Zenani was marrying a Swazi prince, and Zindzi was worried she would have to go bare-breasted to the ceremony—Mandela wrote her a charming note of encouragement.

“The beauty of a woman lies as much in her face as in her body. Your breasts should be as hard as apples and as dangerous as cannon balls. You can proudly and honourably display them when occasion demands.”

For more go here.

Finally, this relatively little known 1984 essay on Mandela by French theorist Jacques Derrida is a must read too. The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration:

For more go here.