“I’ve Got The Handle, You’ve Got The Blade”

Neighborly Dispute in BK Becomes A Case of Mackerel vs Machete

Major Mackerel, dancehall’s undisputed champion of bugged-out sound effects, wound up on the wrong end a swinging sword yesterday morning in Brooklyn.

According to today’s New York Times, the veteran DJ responsible for the King Jammy’s classic “Pretty Looks Done (And You No Get None)” ran afoul of his downstairs neighbors yesterday morning in East New York.

Major Mackerel “Pretty Looks Done” (Jammy’s)

[audio:https://www.boomshots.com/tunes/PrettyLooksDone.mp3]

NYPD officers arrived at the scene to find 41-year-old Garfield Dixon “with lacerations to the head, arm and hand.” They arrested 37-year-old Oscar Joseph and confiscated his two-foot-long sword. Mr. Joseph reportedly accused Mackerel of harrassing his wife with “rude, suggestive comments.”

But after returning from King’s County Hospital with bandages on his dreads and a cast on his hand, the wounded wordsmith said he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. “I was singing my song,” he told the Times. “Then I see him with a sword.” It’s difficult to know which of the DJ’s tunes might have caused the neighbor’s vexation. If it wasn’t the scathing “Pretty Looks” (“Shaka Zulu you favor Shaka Zulu”) perhaps he gave her a verse of “Cow Cod” (“Uno a fool / Uno mentally mad / From you eat cow buddy you give the cow a blowjob.”)

Perhaps the DJ should have tried to abide by the lyrics of his classic Answer riddim cut “Dutty Bungle” on the Crat label: “Major Mackerel mix, but me no mingle, and me no get entangled with no form ah Dutty Bungle.”