You may curse if you're a Foreign Artiste

I love my country, but damn if it isn't rife with hypocrisy!

Now, a group of really influential companies that are always sponsoring events (think Air J, Red Stripe, C&W, Digicel) formed a Coalition of Corporate Sponsors. Now this so-called coalition's main objective was to encourage/insist on some decency in dancehall events. Any artiste performing in an event that they sponsored was supposed to adhere to certain rules, observe certain code of conduct - no cursing, bashing of gays etc. Beenie Man and Bounti Killer had violated that at a carnival event and they were banned.

Now, can someone explain to me how is it that Fiddy (50c) performed at Reggae Sumfest last week, used a lot of foul language and I haven't heard peep out of anyone about it. Huh? Nada, Nil, zilch from the Corporate sponsors. Does the code only apply to local artistes? I wasn't there but I heard that Dancehall night which is traditionally the rawest night of all was like church service compared to when Fiddy performed.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Fiddy but what is good for the goose must be good for the gander. I'm not even necessarily against risque performances (I do love Lady Saw) but it's unfair to have separate rules.

My personal view is this, apply ratings to the different events just as there are rating to albums. Therefore, patrons know from beforehand that they are attending an xrated event. I'm not necessarily excited about the cursing during the performance, the occasional or odd expletive I can live with. However, I don't wan't to listen to any performance where the expletives are like punctuation marks. I can appreciate though, that not everyone feels the same way that I do.

We need to level the playing ground though.

Read some more on this here