There’s a moment when I’m interviewing Vybz Kartel in the courtyard of the Four Seasons hotel in Tower Bridge, London, and the UK government emergency alert test rings on my phone. He is panicked by it and jumps up. “Me ready fi run you know!” he says, which has us both laughing.
It is a funny moment, but also a jolting one considering that it arrives in the middle of him discussing the lasting psychological effects of prison. Kartel, 49, real name Adidja Palmer, had been incarcerated across different institutions in Jamaica following his conviction for the 2011 murder of his associate Clive “Lizard” Williams. Following a lengthy appeal process, he was released in July last year after the ruling was overturned by the UK privy council (which is the final court of appeal for Jamaica due to the nation being a former British colony).
At the time of his arrest, Kartel was one of the biggest dancehall stars in Jamaica’s history. He emerged in 2003 with the album Up 2 Di Time, serving up provocation, badness and a rapid-fire rhythmic “toasting” vocal style that was both gravelly and versatile. Influenced by grittier DJs such as Ninjaman, it was a stylistic departure from the more mellifluous “singable” reggae sound of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. A succession of hits, from the erotic duet Romping Shop with Spice in 2009 to the foot-stomping Clarks in 2010 and the vibrant Summer Time in 2011, aided Kartel’s crossover to the British and American charts.
By the early 2010s he had more than laid claim to the King of Dancehall title that was hitherto bestowed on Beenie Man. But today he’s a reminder that kings often experience moments of profound disturbance. Speaking of life after prison, he tells me: “My sleeping habits have changed … if I hear a key shake, it traumatise me”; the wardens would jingle them before a head count of prisoners. He “went hard” on smoking and drinking when he was released and both remain a crutch. Despite this, he refuses therapy: “I understand what I’m going through and I just let it work itself out.”
It is humbling to witness Kartel this vulnerable. He is not a shrinking violet; in fact he is cheerful and cracks jokes. He looks at my pleated black trousers and starts to sing “spray dem like Issey Miyake”, a lyric from his track Empire Army referencing the Japanese fashion designer. But it is evident that prison has shifted something. It is a stark contrast, too, to his public triumphalism. Days before meeting him, I watched him perform at the O2 arena in London. The show began with Kartel performing from a cell, then emerging clad in a sparkling red Givenchy two-piece and launching into recent hit The Comet, which portends his release and has the memorable line “Me fuck yuh madda through di prison grill”.
While there had been an impression that Kartel received celebrity treatment behind bars, the reality is more bleak. In 2014, a doctor diagnosed him with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition that was being aggravated by his prison surroundings. Conditions in Jamaica’s Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre were said to be filthy and inhumane, and in the affidavit for his release, Kartel said that he feared dying in prison, as his heart was functioning at 37% of its capacity. “I was in urgent need of medical help that the state could not provide,” he says. On release, his physical health was so bad that at his welcome-home concert in Kingston on New Year’s Eve, he struggled to breathe and walk while performing. A diet of whole foods and green juices has helped support him back to health, and he says he was pleased by his more energetic showing at the O2.
Kartel had been one of dancehall’s greatest successes, but he had to watch from prison as it exploded into the mainstream, with the streaming giant Drake using the sound on his 2016 album Views and signing Kartel’s own protege Popcaan to his OVO label. “It didn’t feel good, but I’m a type of person that is gonna find a way,” he says. Kartel released music prolifically from prison. In 2016 alone he released 50 new songs, and Rolling Stone wrote that he “still rules dancehall.”. He cites the global hit Fever, certified gold in the US and silver in the UK, as evidence of how he tapped into the genre’s momentum – all with lyrics recorded in Tower Street on an iPhone 5S.
Of course, Kartel feels that those years in jail unjustly robbed him of much of his life. After being arrested for weed possession in 2011, he found himself kept in custody, charged with the murder of Jamaican businessman Barrington “Bossie” Burton (for which he was acquitted in July 2013), and then the murder of Lizard. I ask if he thinks he was set up. “Of course I was set up, because I’m innocent,” he says. “They always try to pin stuff on me, because they say gangsters, I influence them. [They say] my circle is questionable, which, in their defence, was true.”
When I ask Kartel if his relationship with Lizard had broken down at any point, he says no. But evidence from his 2014 trial, which Kartel faced with three co-defendants (who all pleaded not guilty), paints a different story. According to police, Lizard was killed after allegedly stealing two guns from Kartel and other members of his Portmore Empire crew. The courtroom was then shown messages sent from a mobile device claimed to be Kartel’s, which read: “Tween me an u a chop we chop up the bwoy Lizard fine fine … As long as u live dem can never find him.” Lizard’s body has never been found. These texts read like a confession. Yet lawyers handling Kartel’s appeal maintained that there was evidence of phone tampering.
Kartel is insistent: “I did not kill Lizard … and they know who did what.” He suggests collusion between different Jamaican authorities to topple him. And while the question of Kartel’s guilt remains only in the court of public opinion, it does track that Kartel was a figure that people wanted to see removed from public life. Before his imprisonment, his gunman tunes, vulgar lyrics known as “slackness” and promotion of hate speech were viewed as influencing an epidemic of violence that was sweeping Jamaica.
As was the Gully-Gaza war, a rivalry between Kartel and the dancehall artist Mavado that erupted in violent confrontations. A 2009 article in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper laments that “the followers of the gun hawks themselves – Vybz Kartel (Gaza) and Mavado (Gully) – are shooting, stabbing up and beating one another”. (He has since reconciled with Mavado, and tells me that their sons attend each other’s birthday parties.) By 2010, Kartel had been banned from entering some Caribbean countries including Grenada, Barbados and St Lucia. Even the deadly Wadando-Gaza gang in Nairobi, Kenya, is said to have drawn inspiration from Kartel.
Today, he says he is “pushing love and unity, shit I should have been doing years ago. But sometimes you pay to learn.” He acknowledges that his previous lyrics contained violence, but he refuses to be scapegoated, saying that his “hardcore” music was a natural consequence of growing up in the ghetto. “The system created that reality for us as ghetto youth. The violence came with politics. The first round of violence that ever reached Jamaica? 1976.” He is referring to the escalation of political violence around the 1976 general election, a year in which there were an estimated 200 political murders.
It was in this year that reggae legend Bob Marley was shot in Kingston, two days before the Smile Jamaica concert that was intended to heal political divisions. It is also the year that Kartel was born. Although Kartel grew up in a two-parent household in Portmore with positive influences, he says that his parents could not watch him every second of the day. “I was born in violence. The streets were always calling. That’s how most ghetto youth get involved in crazy shit.”
He cites the fact that he has, in recent years, received European and American visas as evidence that the world sees he has changed, as “these visas aren’t easy to get”. His first public appearance in the UK after leaving prison was at this year’s Mobo awards, where he was honoured with an Impact award for his influence on music and culture, a far cry from the 2012 awards, where he had his nomination for best reggae act withdrawn after refusing to apologise for homophobic lyrics.
I take the opportunity to ask him about those lyrics and if he has regrets about them, feeling comfortable enough with how generous and warm he is to tell him that I am a gay man. “I do regret it, because culture is powerful,” he says. “What we were doing is mimicking what was said before by entertainers. In Jamaica, we learned a lot of homophobia from the church. Now I would never do that. I think people should live, regardless of who you are or who you’re sleeping with – do your thing!”
There are other regrets he has, like bleaching his skin (Kartel released a range of skin-lightening cosmetics in 2011). He told himself that he bleached because he wanted his tattoos to show. “In hindsight, I think it was just that colonial mindset that makes Black people think white is right.” He won’t bleach again: “That’s bullshit, man.”
But that anti-colonial mentality is not entirely representative of Kartel’s views. His experience of Jamaica’s justice system has made him not just lose faith in the country, but become an advocate for Britain. As he points out, his Instagram bio features the words “Long live the king” along with a little union flag. He celebrates the UK privy council for delivering justice, rejecting calls for a Caribbean Court of Justice, a demand spearheaded by the Barbadian prime minister Mia Mottley, feeling that Jamaica is “too corrupt. I went through the system and I see it tear people apart that don’t got no money,” he says. “I have money, and look how long it took me to get justice. So no, I’d never support that court of appeal.”
Kartel also keeps his distance from Jamaican politics – supporting neither the ruling Jamaica Labour Party, nor the opposition People’s National Party (PNP). In his 2015 track Pound of Rice he says, “mi ah vote fi di pool party!” He imagines running for office, on a manifesto of “education, sports and entertainment” to serve those who grew up in the ghetto, but is clear that this would only be as an independent, “they would probably try to kill me. I’m not even joking.” Despite this, he is often inadvertently pulled into politics. When he made a surprise appearance at the PNP annual conference last year, it was interpreted as an endorsement, though he says he was only there to support his lawyer, Isat Buchanan, who recently won a seat in parliament. More recently, he condemned naysayers who criticised him for sharing the Jamaican government’s emergency response and recovery effort initiative in the wake of Hurricane Melissa, saying “this is not about politics, it’s about Jamaica”.
These days, Kartel is just trying to stay out of trouble. His main focus is figuring out how to continue expanding the reach of dancehall, seeking collaborations with Afrobeats artists who have broken out globally and striking a balance between commercial appeal and artistic integrity. He wants its tracks to become universal household classics, “like Bob Marley’s One Love – everybody can sing that, but with dancehall it’s like …” – he spits gibberish to communicate the genre’s fast pace. “But people love it. I call it the biggest underground music on the planet. Once we get it to that level where it’s on the playlists globally, we good.”
Mostly though he is embracing freedom. He prays to God every day and he’s due to remove old tattoos of a devil’s head and the 666 symbol as he pursues a cleaner path. He is still struggling with sickness, but he feels good. “I tell you, nothing can ruin my day or my energy. I’ve got a new lease on life.”
Vybz Kartel’s album Heart & Soul is out now.
