By UNCUNT staffFor somebody who loudly professes his hatred of gay people, you have to say, Elephant Man is a bit, well……….gay?
Look at him dancing in this video. It could justifiably be described as mincing. Look at his hair. Dyed two colours, perfectly braided. Tight tank tops. Bling.
Look at this picture of him in a naval military style red jacket, look at his gold shoes and silver Michael Jackson-esque gloves. This really is a man who unashamedly embraces camp.
Look at him here sandwiched homoerotically between Chris Brown and Usher. This is a man in the closet screaming to get out. And yet he sings about murdering gay men. What an absolute cunt.
In all fairness, Elephant Man has drawn the short straw here. We could have picked any one of Jamaica’s leading dancehall acts; Beenie Man, Bounty Killer or the infamous Buju Banton. All of them have forged their reputations and statuses within the Jamaican music scene by pandering to the kind of gay-hating that, sadly, is a part of life in Jamaica.
Being half Jamaican I am saddened that homophobia is a cornerstone of dancehall music; a genre that is otherwise incredibly exciting in the way it challenges mainstream Western audiences with overtly sexual lyrical content and dance moves, flamboyant dress codes, simmering sub-culture, heavy bass and aggressive gruffly barked lyrics.
On a trip to Jamaica two years ago I attended a show at which Beenie Man played. The whole experience made the UK live music scene seem tame. Held in an outdoor car park, the stage boasted speaker stacks as tall as a house, the crowd openly blazed fat sensimilla spliffs. In between acts cars and motorbikes were stunt-driven around the tarmac with little regard for health & safety and, it being the rainy season, the heavens opened occasionally forcing people to run for cover under the Red Stripe shacks. It was a wholly edifying experience.
Far more depressing was the night at a club in Montego Bay frequented half by tourists and half by locals. Until my trip to Jamaica I had assumed the homophobia inherent in dancehall culture was exaggerated by the media. However halfway through a night of really good dancing the DJ suddenly put on Boom Bye Bye; the hateful 1992 hit by Buju Banton that fundamentally set down the blueprint for all the homophobic hatred that has followed since. I stopped dancing and was shocked to see that for the rest of the club this was the tune of the night. The whole place went nuts with the youths (men and women) sticking there hands in the air in the gunshot symbol singing along to the words:
Boom bye bye in a batty boy head
Rude boy nah promote the nasty man
Dem haffi dead
The song is incitement to murder gay people and led to Banton being banned from performing in most European countries as well as in America.
In the club I turned to the Jamaican girl I’d been talking to and asked her is this really what people in Jamaica think? And she proudly told me that yes being gay is not accepted. I explained what London was like and that most people in England considered homophobia in the same way as racism, i.e. unacceptable. I asked her what would happen to a Jamaican man if he was openly gay and she told me there are no gay men in Jamaica, any that there are get killed.
But, while Buju Banton is pure hatred, I find Elephant Man somehow more offensive. Kind of like the kid at school who hangs around with the tough kids and copies what they do so as not to get battered.
He’s cottoned on to what he’s supposed to say in his songs and this leads him to record absurdly cuntish songs like We Nuh Like Gay.
We no like gay, we no like gay
Well ah just how Jamaica stay
From you no like batty man
Well we wan see your gun right away
Cause we burn dem and we run dem
Batty man and bad man can’t be friend
Simplistic, infantile, cunt-heavy nonsense. What the fuck is this man on about? Who goes out of their way to actually spend time and money recording a song about killing gay people? A song that will be taken literally by your thousands of fans and further entrench discrimination and encourage violence towards gay people. I mean, there’s the right to freedom of speech, and then there’s abuse of that right, and Elephant Man has abused it like a proper cunt.I wonder if Elephant Man has ever met any gay people. It strikes me, from outward appearances, he might get along with the gay community. As long as he kept his dumb fucking mouth shut. Perhaps, as an experiment, a headline slot at G.A.Y might be in order – a meeting of minds, a coming together of cultures. It might introduce him to a whole new world. He might find he likes a bit of cock every now and then. Who knows maybe his next single might be We Really Really Like Gay.
Seriously, Elephant Man, do you really nuh like gay? Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
