The mystic soprano sound of I-Wayne will disarm fans once again with VP’s sophmore release “Book Of Life”, set to be released in November 2007. Not many roots and culture artists can say that they have landed a hit on major urban/hip-hop radio as I-Wayne did in 2005 with his fiery single, “Can’t Satisfy Her,” on heavy rotation at New York’s Hot 97 radio station; or receive critically acclamation on their debut album as he did with Lava Ground. I-Wayne has undeniably raised the bar for roots reggae of this generation by captivating the world with his distinct sound and deep insight.

On his eagerly awaited release Book Of Life, I-Wayne polishes his enchanting smooth sound over airy instrumentals with simplistc yet profound lyrics that remind listeners of an essential truth—that life is a gift for which we can be grateful. The title track, which is the CD’s first single, provides an overview of the set, expressing everything I Wayne has learned in his 28 years of life and his desire to share his experience—a glowing example of the personal rendered universal. This uniquely positive world view comes across most clearly in “Life Is Easy,” in which I Wayne flips the script on reggae’s usual recounting of the suffera’s trials by reminding listeners that the way out of suffering is to give thanks for the blessings nature gives us.

He also covers domestic violence in “Jealousy and Abuse” (featuring the great Lady G); male and female intimacy in “Need Her in I Arms”; and worldwide divisions and anarchy in “Politics and Religion.” Following his philosophy throughout The Book of Life, I- Wayne advises to “just appreciate life as it is and praise it.” “We need to care for life more. We can’t have too much love for material because then we disregard life. I’m not hear to force anyone but to share some of life’s knowledge–just being ‘naturous’.”

Reggae artiste Coco Tea lives in Hayes, Clarendon, and says a portion of his roof was damaged during the hurricane.

“Bwoy, ‘Dean’ crush me. It blow off part of my roof and from 4 p.m. Sunday to bout 3 a.m. Monday mi still a sweep out water. It mash me up wicked and wet up all my things,” he said.

Coco Tea says though he didn’t expect the Category Four hurricane to go smoothly, he didn’t see the damage to his roof coming. “Because of how my structure stay, I was never expecting it, but I still give thanks and praise in life. There are people out there worse than me; places like all Rocky Point, Portland Cottage, Lionel Town mash up and me really get a portion of damage,” he said.

Since Coco Tea is an artiste, it wouldn’t seem strange if life’s tragedies lent themselves, to his pen. Coco Tea, however says, “Mi nuh choose fi accumulate songs on the expense of the people. Me nuh see it too pretty. I want to help the people; mi nuh waah sing bout mi satellite dish wha blow off and di roof. A nuff a dem livity gone. What I want to do is more to raise funds fi see who I can help out and appeal to the Government at home and abroad. Right now, it don’t warrant an election. What going to happen after the people go vote and then come back to homelessness and hopelessness?”

Singer Da’Ville on the other hand is singing praises for his new-found friend, ‘plastic’. “Mi find a new thing name plastic weh work miracles during the storm an keep the water outside. I was home di whole time an mi did jus deh deh a hope sey everybody else safe an ting,” Da’Ville said.

Da’Ville was, however, disappointed that a couple of his shows and plans fell through because of the hurricane, as he said, “I was looking forward so much to ‘Champions In Action’. That was one show definitely and mi kinda have a bunch of rehearsals that back up now because of the light situation.”

Nothing positive

But despite other artistes in the past, like Lovindeer, who had a major hit song about Hurricane Gilbert, Da’Ville says he wasn’t really inspired to write any such songs.

“Nuh really, di storm is nothing positive, nuff people lose dem life, house yuh nuh, mi cyan sing “bout something negative even though is a whole nature thing an wi nuh have no control ova dat, but wi jus haffi try buil back yah now,” Da’Ville said.

Elephant Man says he too was very prepared for the storm as he went around to check on his family before getting in some last-minute shopping.

“Mi all run guh down a mi modda, chop down couple tree an mek sure sey mi family an everybody all right an lef some mackerel money an den mi guh buy one Delco, cause yuh done know sey wi a artiste an mi haffi have mi A/C an TV an ting, an mi buy one drum fi water an ting yuh nuh. Mi did fully prepared,” Ele said.

Now, after weathering the storm in comfort, Ele says he is still in storm mode.

“Mi tek off Elephant Man an put him down an come out wid Oneil, cause a storm ting an mi deh yah a feed mi pit bull dem cause mi jus pull down back mi storm shutta an deh yah inna mi wata boots an mi gloves a clean up an help mi neighbours. Suh wi nuh deh indoors, wi deh in di streets an some dumpling an chicken back deh yah a gwaan curry down pon di fire, yuh nuh, an whole heap a cornmeal.

Unlike Da’Ville, Ele is already preparing a song for Hurricane Dean as he says, “Mi a gwaan hook up a likkle ting bout ‘Dean’, it a guh name ‘Who Sen ‘Dean?’ suh by now Monday when di whole country recuperate an light come back an ting.”

It’s hard to believe, but ‘Dean’ didn’t leave everyone mourning. Matthew Gray of Coppershot sound says no real damage was sustained to his home or studio. “Is just the loss of power which still is a problem, but basically everyone in the sound is okay, just one person roof gone, but he is abroad right now. But before the hurricane, we cleared out all the equipment out of the studio and everything was boarded up.” He also says the sound’s income was not greatly affected because it came on a Sunday.

Source: Jamaica Star

Promoted by Irie Jam Radio/Media, the event has grown beyond expectations pulling out record numbers of patrons since its initial staging.

This year’s line-up, an eclectic mix of reggae and dancehall acts, both current and established, include Stephen Marley, Luciano, Morgan Heritage, Anthony B, Assassin, Beenie Man, Mr Vegas, Da’Ville, Lady Saw, Tony Matterhorn, Munga, Mr Easy, Etana, Pressure, and Jockwell.

According to Anthony Turner, publicist for Irie Jamboree, the objectives of the show have so far materialised. “From the first year we have been able to put together a quality presentation that has now become the yardstick by which other reggae concerts are measured,” he said.

“We have always strived to produce and promote a family oriented event and so far we are extremely proud of all four events that we have produced. The public has responded by turning out in record numbers each year. In fact, last year, despite the treat of a major hurricane on the very weekend the concert was planned, the event was able to attract over 25,000 patrons. This year, given the pre-event buzz on the streets and in the industry, we anticipate a turnout close to 30,000 strong,” said Turner.

At the 2007 International Reggae and World Music Awards, Irie Jamboree won the award for Favourite Concert of the Year, beating out Welcome to Jamrock and Red Stripe Reggae Sumfest.

According to Turner, more than 150 registered media entities from England, Japan, Jamaica, Canada and various states within the USA covered the event. “This year we will have even greater interest in the event,” he said. “We plan to have radio broadcasts to various stations across the USA and Jamaica. This will greatly assist our efforts to brand the event internationally.”

Turner also hinted that at least three international reggae artistes will be making guest appearances on this year’s show. However, he declined to give names.

Source: Jamaica Observer

Viewers of MTV’s “Total Request Live” are wondering why the show has decided to edit the word “suicidal” from Sean Kingston’s No. 1 record “Beautiful Girls,” even though most radio stations and other networks, including BET, leave the word intact.

“Because we know [suicide] is an issue that so many members of our audience struggle with, we do not take any references to suicide lightly,” a spokeswoman for MTV explained to the New York Daily News.

“With regards to Sean Kingston’s ‘Beautiful Girls,’ we knew that the label had a version substituting ‘suicidal’ with ‘in denial’ so we gave them the option of submitting the version with ‘in denial’ or audio dropping ‘suicidal.’ The label chose to audio drop ‘suicidal.’”

The chorus for “Beautiful Girls,” currently spending its third week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, is as follows:

You’re way too beautiful girl

That’s why it’ll never work

You’ll have me suicidal, suicidal

When you say it’s over.

Source: EURweb.com

The eye of the hurricane was passing over land in Chetumal on the southern tip of Mexico which borders Belize.

The area of Corozal in northern Belize had been bracing for the full brunt of hurricane conditions.

Rene Villaneuava of BBC Caribbean partner station Love FM in Belize reports that over 10,000 people have been evacuated from areas closest to the storm’s centre.

“Many people are in hurricane shelters awaiting the passage of this dangerous hurricane”, he told BBC Caribbean early on Tuesday morning as his station continued to track the storm.

The area of Corozal on Belize’s north-eastern coast was expected to feel the full brunt of the hurricane’s 160 mile-an-hour winds,.

A curfew has also been imposed in some parts of northern Belize including many of the ‘cayes’ popular with tourists for their coral reefs and other diving attractions.

Further south, in Belize City, officials closed the hospitals and urged people to head inland, saying the town’s shelters were not strong enough to withstand the hurricane.

Cancun and other tourist resorts in Mexico were spared a direct hit as the storm came ashore at 0330 (0830 GMT) about 40 miles (65km) north-east of Chetumal.

The Category Five storm – the highest strength – is moving steadily west with winds of up to 160mph (255km/h).

It is pushing a large surge of water that could flood coastal communities.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Florida said the eye of the storm had made landfall near the town of Majahual.

Last-minute evacuations took place as the powerful storm was expected to bring a flood surge of up to 18 feet (5.5 metres).

The NHC said the Yucatan Peninsula, Belize as well as Guatemala and northern Honduras could expect heavy rainfall which could cause flash floods and landslides.

Jamaica election

A formal announcement is expected today postponing Jamaica’s general elections originally scheduled for next Monday, August 27.

Jamaicans are now expected to go to the polls on September 3rd as the post Dean clean-up continues.

The hurricane has already claimed at least 11 lives in the eastern Caribbean, but largely spared the low-lying Cayman Islands on Monday.

In Jamaica, it tore off roofs, uprooted trees and downed power lines as the storm’s centre passed just south of the island.

Tourist resorts have been boarded up and offshore oil facilities closed but there is concern for residents of poor communities living in flimsy homes.

Andrea Montalvo of the American Telemundo television network said the storm was wreaking havoc in the Mexican city of Chetumal.

“Inside the hotel it is really bad, every 10 or 15 minutes you can hear windows shattering and people are coming out of their rooms in panic,” she said.

“Some people have been moved to schools on higher ground, but if this is how it is here in this hotel, which is pretty solid, I don’t want to think about how it is there.”

She said the shelters in Chetumal and surrounding areas did not seem well prepared and had holes in the walls and no food or water.

Further south, in Belize City, officials closed the hospitals and urged people to head inland, saying the town’s shelters were not strong enough to withstand the hurricane.

Cancun and other popular Mexican resorts are escaping a “direct hit” but that has not stopped around two-thirds of Cancun’s tourists leaving the area.

Category Five storms are rare – only three have hit the United States since record-keeping began.

Some holidaymakers camped overnight at Cancun’s airport to find a flight while others were turned away.

Police officers have been deployed to prevent looting while residents have boarded up their homes in preparedness for the storms.

Mexico’s state-oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, has evacuated the remainder of its 14,350 workers and shut down production on the offshore rigs.

The hurricane is moving steadily west at about 20mph (32km/h) and is expected to lose some strength across the Yucatan Peninsula before being re-energised as it hits sea again over the Bay of Campeche on Tuesday night, the NHC said.

It is due to hit Mexico’s coast a second time in the state of Veracruz.

‘A good beating’

Dean has already caused widespread damage as it careered along the south coast of Jamaica.

“I took a journey onto the streets of Kingston and saw huge trees, massive mango trees, coconut trees that have blocked the roads,” said Kathy Barrett from Radio Jamaica.

How hurricanes are tracked
Dean’s path of destruction

“Power lines are down, it really has been – we got a good beating from Hurricane Dean.”

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller declared a month-long state of emergency, widening the powers of security forces.

A general election is due to take place on 27 August, but the storm has cast doubt on that date.

In the US, the return of the space shuttle Endeavour was brought forward by a day, to Tuesday in an attempt to beat the hurricane should it eventually reach Texas, where Nasa’s mission control is based.

The storm strengthened into a Category 4 Hurricane after roaring through the eastern Caribbean.

Parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, were on hurricane watch on Saturday.

A weekend hurricane watch also remains in place for Jamaica and parts of Cuba.

The British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico were on tropical storm watch. The US National Hurricane Centre expected this to be discontinued later on Saturday.

Two dead

St Lucian authorities have confirmed that two people were killed.

The BBC’s Patricia Maxwell Lewis was in St Lucia, on the northern part of the island when Dean struck in the wee hours of Friday morning.

“It arrived with a bang at about 2:30 this morning, the winds have been blowing very strongly all night,” she said.

She confirmed that the children’s ward in the main hospital in the capital Castries had suffered a hit from Dean, with the roof blown off.

She also reported a lot of flooding, with boats blown onto dry land.

Martinique

In Martinique, Radio Caraibe International’s Jean Phillip Ludon told BBC Caribbean that many roofs had been ripped off houses on the French island, and that flooding had been a serious problem in several areas.

Electricity was affected, with more than 100,000 people left without power supplies overnight.

Electricity has since been restored in the capital Fort de France.

Jean Phillip Ludon said many Martiniquans had confirmed taking shelter in their “toilets” after roofs or windows had disappeared in Dean’s raging winds.

Dominica too, is assessing how badly hit it was by the storm.

Local radio stations have been reporting one person dead and another missing, but the authorities in Roseau had not confirmed this by Friday afternoon.

Jamaican alert

Jamaica meanwhile has gone on alert, fearing it could feel the powerful winds of the storm by Saturday evening.

“We have been preparing for any eventuality,” the Director General of Jamaica’s Disaster Preparedness Office Ronald Jackson told BBC Caribbean.

He admitted that possible flooding in low-lying areas and sea swells affecting coastal areas were among the concerns.

“There are a number of communities, most of them low-lying especially in the eastern section of the island which we are carefully planning for and watching” Mr Jackson said.

Even before its arrival on Jamaican shores Dean is already causing trouble – campaigning ahead of the August 27 general election in ten days time has all but been put on hold for the weekend.

Officials fear a direct hit which could result in the election being postponed.

New poll date for Jamaica?

Jamaicans are now expected to go to the polls on September 3rd instead of next Monday August 27th as previously scheduled.

A formal announcement is expected to come today.

The decision to postpone the election has been recommended by the Electoral Commission of Jamaica – and is said to result from the disruptions caused by Hurricane Dean.

It said it would be hard-pressed to manage the elections as scheduled under the prevailing conditions.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has stressed that the decision to maintain or postpone the date of the election was for the Electoral Commission and the Governor-General to decide.

BVI election upset

There’s been a major upset coming out of the elections in the British Virgin Islands.

Chief Minister Dr Orlando Smith’s ruling National Democratic Party has lost power to the opposition Virgin Islands Party of Islands Party of Ralph Oneal.

The Virgin Islands Party won 8 of the nine constituency seats.

However, counting was still continuing for the four at-large candidates.

With the elections comes a new constitution for the British Virgin Islands.

In one of the main changes the new head of government Ralph Oneal will be known as the Premier – a change from Chief Minister.

Taiwan continues to woo

The president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian begins a tour of Central American and Caribbean countries today.

He’ll visit the Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

An official in Taipei said Mr Chen aimed to consolidate Taiwan’s diplomatic and commercial links.

Taiwan and Beijing are involved in a battle for diplomatic influence in the region.

In June, Costa Rica ended its long-standing allegiance to Taiwan and transferred its diplomatic recognition to Beijing.

A month before, St. Lucia did the opposite, giving Taiwan a rare triumph.

Mr Chen wanted to visit Castries as well but officials in Taipei said the St. Lucia government wasn’t ready to receive him at this time.

The zeroes do add-up

Justice authorities in Suriname have arrested two suspects of an alleged million dollar fraud-scam that targeted two government ministries.

One of the suspects is a high level official at the Finance ministry, the other is a contractor who worked on most of the projects that the government said it paid far too much for.

The Suriname government says it discovered that some civil servants were adding a number of zeros unto payments for goods and services.

The amount alleged to have been embezzled now stands at more than 5 million Surinamese dollars (about 1.8 million US dollars).

The police in Paramaribo have said it’s likely that more arrests will follow in this case that’s shocked the nation.

Source: BBC News

When Jeffrey Campbell first became involved with the music business at the age of 17, he adopted the moniker Assassin for a deliberate reason. Although he never claimed to be a killer per se, the DJ’s energetic, rough-edged vocal style and uncommonly well constructed lyrics allowed him to pick off all competitors with cold-blooded precision. Yet somehow they never see him coming. While still a student at Camperdown High School, Assassin wrote “Big Up All The Shotta Dem,” which Spragga Benz recorded on the Street Sweeper riddim. Before long, he was recording for himself, and from “Ruffest,” his breakthrough hit on the Diwali riddim and through Infiltration, his critically acclaimed 2005 debut album on VP Records, Assassin distinguished himself in a musical arena known for bluster and bravado. Debunking the common perception of reggae artists as dunces and reprobates, Assassin enrolled as a student at University of Sunderland in England, studying towards a degree in Business Management

OC: Sean Paul once said “Assassin is the one to take dancehall music to an international level and step it up like Beenie Man, Shaggy and I have been doing it, … The girls dem like him, the lyrics he puts together are always top, he chooses good melodies, and he has an image.” Hearing this, how does it feel to be one of the most talked about artist in dancehall music.

Assassin: It definitely feels good, because there is a lot that goes into it and of course, you want to feel like it’s all worth it and what you are doing is appreciated by your fans as well as your peers.

OC: Was it hard to get recognized in the reggae business?