Mad Gal Spice Keeps It Mad Real: “We Know What It’s Like To Struggle”
Though she’s best known for racy tunes like “Rampin’ Shop” there’s another side to the dancehall diva known as Spice.
In this clip from a new dancehall documentary shot by a PBS show called WorldFocus, Spice gets the usual questions about the controversy surrounding her music and dancehall overall. Spice keeps it one hundred:
“These songs are not the things that are getting the kids in Jamaica corrupted,” Spice aptly points out. “It’s the poverty that we’re facing, and everybody’s trying to take the spotlight away from the poverty that is happening in Jamaica. This is what is getting the youths in society corrupted: needs and wants and necessities they want and they cannot get… In Jamaica, it’s really hard. It’s really rough for most of us. We know what it is like to struggle to get there.”
Having said that, Spice proceeds to shut it down with a song that’s far cry from “Kartel spin me like a satellite dish.”
The Worldfocus crew decided to fly down from the States to after songs like Rampin Shop sparked such an outcry that certain dancehall records were banned from the airwaves—the latest skirmish of a culture war that has continued in Jamaica since time immemorial.
To the credit of the Worldfocus team, they did a fairly balanced job with a complex story. and they talked to some interesting people. Here, Ragashanti makes the case in defense of dancehall:
