Fire Extinguisher

06/14/2000 2:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Jacquie Juceam

"I don't breathe fire. I am not a dragon," pronounces dancehall reggae monarch Beenie Man while onstage at New York's Irving Plaza, celebrating the release of his new Virgin Records CD, Art And Life. Brazen and dramatic, Beenie Man is taking a slap at his adversary, Capleton, whose catchphrase is "more fire" and whose schtick is to "burn fire" to everything and everyone he believes to be from Babylon--including Beenie Man.

Since the early '90s, Beenie has sparred lyrically with rival Bounty Killer, but he switched his focus to Capleton, the Rastaman best known for the song "Tour," in 1998, after he and Capleton fought over a microphone at a concert at Randall's Island in New York. A war developed between the two veteran DJs, as they frequented local studios to furiously record songs that insulted each other and counteracted each other's most recent chart-topping personal attacks. Beenie recorded the anti-Capleton tunes "Fire Burn" and "Heights Of Great Man," and Capleton, in turn, lashed out at Beenie with "Slew Dem" and "Burn Down Dready." But perhaps one of this ongoing battle's most classic moments was the Sting event, last Christmas, during which Beenie Man came out in a war suit with a fire extinguisher to symbolically quell Capleton before his hometown crowd.

However, despite the dozens of Capleton-inspired war tunes Beenie released last year, there is, remarkably, no evidence of this scuffle on Beenie's new Virgin disc. "Well, you know, that is more for the Jamaican market," he explains. "For the international market, there are much more important things to focus on, and reggae is much bigger than just the 'almshouse' [war]. There are many sides to Beenie Man, and this album expresses them."

Beenie's formula for success is to be everywhere and anywhere. In Jamaica, he drops new tunes nearly every week, is spotted out on the dancehall scene almost as often the resident peanut vendor, and is endlessly involved in some dramatic mix-up covered in the local media. Whether it's from his highly publicized romance with X-rated Carlene The "Dancehall Queen" (the dancehall icon best known for being "the girl on the Slam condoms rapper") or his controversial lyrics, Beenie Man is "Mr. Mention."

"You know me," the flamboyant, dreadlocked entertainer shrugs. "I am always in the middle of things. People need to be talking about you, seeing you, hearing you. If not, they will forget about you, and someone else will take your place."

Even Beenie's biggest commercial hit, "Who Am I?," first gained popularity in Jamaica due to the controversy surrounding his ambiguous delivery of the song's lyrics. Fans all over Jamaica were wondering if Beenie was questioning a gay lifestyle or actually revealing his own sexual preference. When he sang, "Who am I?/ The girls dem sugar/ How can I/ Make love to a fellow/ In a rush/ Pass me the keys to my truck," listeners didn't know how to interpret the song. Was he cynically asking, "How can I make love to a fellow?" Or was he specifically asking, "How can I make love to a fellow in a rush?"

But Beenie's gimmicky antics are just a small part of his success. He has more awards and No. 1 hits under his belt than any other dancehall artist, not to mention two Grammy nominations, and apart from Shaggy, he's the only dancehall artist with a major-label deal. But more importantly, in an industry where the shelf life of an artist is often shorter than that of a bottle of milk, after seven years at the top of the game, Beenie Man indisputably holds the international title of Dancehall Monarch.