Kingston, Jamaica: In a stirring surprise to thousands of his fans worldwide, jailed Jamaican dancehall star Vybz Kartel released a recently recorded single in which he urged his fans to keep the faith.
In the song; “faith”, which went live on the world wide web yesterday (24 Oct, 2014), Kartel, popularly called “the World Boss” by his followers, took an almost different twist in his lyrics.
He urged youths to read the bible, listen to their parents and not become a victim of the system.
But in an apparent reference to his conviction for murder and pending appeal, Kartel, whose real name is Adijah Palmer, reiterate that he nor his fans would not be giving his “haters” anything to celebrate.
Trying to analyze whether the recording would have been an older one, several music industry analysts told this publication that the message within the song, the quality of his voice, and the inconsistent flow of his singing would suggest that the recording was done recently and remotely. It could have then been engineered in a recording studio.
However, Kartel is not known to be enjoying any privileges to continue recording and publishing music while in prison, unlike others like Jah Cure who had enjoyed such a concession during the later part of his imprisonment.
Many industry insiders have since suffice that the song must have been a black market recording, which is a fan maintenance tactic often used by mostly rap artists who would either caused an engineer to record their lyrics via a standard (authorized) prison phone call or through other improvised and unauthorized means.
But for those who were greeted with the online release of the song, the means of recording seemed irrelevant to their excitement.
Upon hearing the new song, thousands of Kartel’s fans from around the world took their celebration to Facebook and several other social networks, pleading for the release of the popular dancehall artiste.
Vybz Kartel is currently serving a life sentence in a Jamaican prison for the 2011 murder of Clive “Lizard” Williams. During sentencing in early April of this year, Kartel was given the harshest sentence of any of his co-defendants. The trial judge had ruled that he would have to serve at least 35 years in jail before he will be eligible for parole.
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