Come along take a ride on the Fantastic Voyage
1Welcome to our May 2014 REGGAEMANIA EVENTS — We present to you a look through the lens of past May 2014 Reggae-Dancehall Events that took place the Toronto and surrounding areas. See event Flyers, Reviews, Videos and Pics, and listen/download our Audio Podcasts.
See Hot Pics — Exco Levi Word of the Wise EP Release @ Belleeny’s 05.18.14
The Words of the Wise EP Release Party featured 3-Time JUNO Award Winner Exco Levi up close and personal with Denise Jones (100.7 CHIN FM “Talk To Me”) at Beeleny’s Restaurant & Lounge (4,000 Steeles Ave. W.) on Sunday May 18th from 8pm – 10:30 pm.
Exco Levi is the first recipient in the Reggae Recording of the Year Category to receive a JUNO Award for three consecutive years, receiving his third award at the 2014 JUNO Award Gala in Winnipeg, Manitoba for his single “Strive” featuring Kabaka Pyramid on March 29th. Exco previously won JUNOS for singles “Storms of Life” in 2013 and the controversial “Bleaching Shop” in 2012.
The event was well attended as the audience wined and dined inside Beelenys (the old Epiphany’s) while taking in Exco going into detail about the songs on his new EP in a shared mic sitdown with water and wine intimate showcase conversation with Ms. Jones, while a DJ played tracks in between. Exco also performed a few of his songs to the delight of the fans inside Beelenys, many of who were Artists, Radio personalities, Print and Social Network journalists, writers and photographers.
Congratulations to Exco – a great Artist who really did deserve to win three consecutive JUNO’s. This is Exco Levi’s time, and he is a very young and growing Artist with the best attitude a Reggae Artist can have. This attitude will take him far in the business, but more than anything else, his great lyrical flow and supreme writing skill is what will take Exco furthest.
The best of Exco Levi is still to come, and like his thousands of fans, I too can hardly wait to hear what’s next. Sticky on next year’s JUNO competitors – because judging from the way things seem for Exco right now, the only way to go is ‘up’, and our other scores of fine Canadian Artists have got their work cut out for them! Exco – just keep doing what you’re doing and “Everything’s Gonna Be Allright”!
See Hot Pics — Beenie Man + Lil Rick @ Kool Huas 05.17.14
The Kool Haus was well attended for BYB-and the massive there had a good time from start to finish, taking in the likes of none other than the King of Dancehall-Beenie Man, alongside the very popular Soca artist Lil Rick, in concert on the same stage, same night. Although I’ve never attended a Soca concert before, I will say after first impression, that Lil Rick is an artist truly in his element. Full of energy, Lil Rick delivered a great show from start to finish, performing hit after hit, and engaging his audience with creative and stylistic dancing while making room for women participants to compete on the stage similar to styles seen the night before at Luxy. Again, Lil Rick cannot be criticized for his performance, he gave it his all, and the majority of the audience seemed to really enjoy his show.
Beenie Man was also interesting to see in concert. Unlike Lil Rick, I’ve seen Beenie Man perhaps too many times, because I’m I’m really to be honest in my critique, I’ll have to say that his show was no more than mediocre. Beenie performed his classics, yet he appeared tired, delivering a laid back show that lacked energy and effort like the show previously delivered by Lil Rick. Perhaps Beenie Man is getting old right before our eyes, 22 years in the business truly makes him an elder, despite how young he appears and how timeless and ageless his music has been able to sustain.
Beenie announced that this was his 49th leg of his ‘Greatest Man Alive’ tour, and he bigged up Buju Banton for being an elder in the business, as well as Bounty Killer, paying him tribute by saying “I don’t have to like you to respect you”. Beenie’s theme for the night was “If you don’t know shit, then don’t say shit”. He congratulated himself for still being relevant after 22 years in the business, as some other artists career’s have gone “right down the drain”. Big up the promoters for delivering a good concert, and I’m sure next year thing will get even sweeter.
See Hot Pics — Mr Vegas + QQ @ Luxy 05.16.14
QQ and Vegas live in concert – hmm. I’d seen Vegas so many times before, and QQ as far as I was concerned was a ‘girls’ artist, meaning man don’t really dance to his tunes, still I found myself gravitating to this crowd. Worse, I had a friend who was aware of my absenteeism, and he had insisted that it was time for both of us to go back into the trenches of the dancehall, or risk loosing touch with a scene that is once again turning over it’s audience right in front of our eyes. His best asset however was his offer to drive that night, as long as I hooked up tickets (LOL). One phone call later and the deal was done, seeing Vegas and QQ was the plan for the busy long weekend Friday, where down the street at the JCA, performing live was none other than LUST, who I’d also seen and photographed up close in concert.
Big up Luxy Nightclub – their team of promoters pulled off another really cool dancehall event that entirely pleased their mostly female audience that night. I big up Luxy and their promotional team because in a time when the raw dancehall culture seems to be shrinking and morphing into a commercialized state, this venue has stayed consistent in presenting a raw flavor to the city with on point, up to date and relevant dancehall artists appearing quite regularly for shows mostly catering to the tastes of their regular Friday Night clientele, and in essence is playing their part in keeping this culture alive. Luxy knows what they’re doing, even if it means sometimes going in pocket and taking a slight financial loss in order to give their massive exactly what they want.
Luxy was packed up with QQ and Vegas fans when I walked inside the club, and people were having a great time dancing to the sound of the Dee-jays while waiting for showtime, which started just after 2am when the bar closed. After this, QQ was the first artist to take the stage. Dressed in all white (tight pants and all),
QQ took the stage with confidence and controlled it from start to finish. He has a short list of songs, being a relatively new 6-year artist who has turned from man to boy in front of our eyes since his “Stookie” hit back in 2008 all the way to his present “One Drop” single which has done really well to establish him career.
QQ’s show was good, but typical for an artist in this stage of development. It seemed that QQ just got his songs ‘out of the way’ because the vast majority of the show was spent entertaining the audience with dance contests and demonstrations involving participants from the audience coming on stage and volunteering to partner up with QQ as he demonstrated his new song and dance called “The Hammer”.
The mostly female audience loved it, as QQ had one girl at a time in the spotlight, girls who didn’t mind bending over, touching their toes and ‘assuming the position’ while QQ proceeded to basically ‘hamme’r them from behind in classic backshot style while often slapping their backsides the way a jockey would whip his horse in race.
If anyone considered these styles explicit or degrading to women, those people were not in the audience. It was supposed to be just innocent dancehall fun, and QQ, being young fresh and sex-symbolism in the eyes of the women there, could not do anything wrong as he handled every female volunteer who took the stage like a real man would (the pics speak for themselves LOL).
I said earlier in this article that I had seen Mr Vegas in concert before, quite a few time actually. He is and has always been one of my favourite dancehall artists, and I have also interviewed him several times during his career. As he gracefully ages into becoming an elder artist, Mr Vegas stays truly talented and keeps getting better with time, a feat only a few artists can manage in a quickly changing dancehall. For whatever reason, this show was an average show for Vegas, who seemed to be tiring or lacking energy compared to previous shows. Although he was the headline act, Vegas did what he has done before, which is take a very casual approach to his concert performance. Personally, I feel Mr Vegas is at a stage where he may be a bit bored and may feel he has nothing to prove, having literally done it all in dancehall.
Dressed in a black and white N.W.A T-shirt with baseball hat, Vegas gave the audience sample of his hit songs in a fast moving show that also incorporated his dee-jay playing classic dancehall hits to the delight of the audience who one would’ve thought had heard it all before in the events leading up to the live show. Of course, Vegas would also stray from his own classic collection of personal hits to entertain the crowd with more samples of tunes belonging to other classic dancehall artists, a tradition at most Vegas shows. Performing hit after hit was not a problem for Vegas that night, who is used to having crowds in his hands.
Vegas closed off his show with a dance competition, as promised, it would be Bruk It Down vs One Drop. Vegas would now bring QQ back to the stage, and in another tactical move, chose to lay back and have QQ take over the MC’ing duties. QQ was so young, my feeling was Vegas was trying to keep out of the spotlight to help bus QQ.
More female volunteers were invited back to the stage to compete, and in the end the winner of the cash envelope (I’m not sure but I think it contained $1,000 cash) turned out to be the girl from St. Lucia (sorry I didn’t get her name) who had little competition when it came to dancing the One Drop and Bruck It Down. Congratulations to her – she could dance, I seen some moves I didn’t know could be done by the human body!
That’s about it in terms of a review. The place was packed and people had fun, bottom line. The city needs more shows like this! I look forward to what’s to come. Big up everybody who was there!
See Hot Pics — Mykal Rose, Junior Reid, Exco Levi @ Sound Academy 05.24.14
I had fun at this concert, not only because I was the DJ alongside Spex, and not only because I was photographing the event, but because this kind of show was out of my league of expertise, and I’m always excited to ‘learn’. I normally would not choose to attend a Mykal Rose/Junior Reid concert since I was never a Black Uhuru fan or fan of either solo artists – nothing wrong with these musical icons, it’s just I’m more or less a dancehall guy, raised with the Beenie’s, Buju’s and Bounty’s of the world.
Having said that, I can also say that after talking to fans of both artists who saw the Kool Haus performances, these shows were more or less average in terms of quality and impact. It wasn’t the band’s fault, Mountain Edge were on on this night, but both Junior Reid and to a lesser degree, Mykal Rose, suffered a disconnect at this concert. They both could have related to the crowd better, talk to the people, slow down a bit, engage their back up singers and the band – but both artists seemed isolated and ‘alone’ on the stage despite delivering a non-stop barrage of hits back to back. The audience was never in a frenzy, and if one tries to remember a hi-light or peak moment from either performers, it would be difficult to remember any. For me, both shows seem to go by with a blur, but in all fairness, maybe if I were a big fan of these artists, it wouldn’t appear this way.
I’ll big up Exco Levi as well – he was right on point with his opening show performance (…it was Exco Levi/Junior Reid/Mykal Rose in that order…) which stretched out longer than I thought it should. Exco gave it his all, perhaps emotional after a tragic event from the night previous that left a rider and his passenger dead after a motorcycle accident. The talk on the Internet the next day was all about how Exco Levi himself was supposed to have been that passenger, and he would have been, except for a last minute change of plans that made him stay behind and another person occupy that passenger seat. A sad story indeed. Condolences to those who have passed.
Exco Levi is always great in concert because he gives it his all, lyric by lyric, tune by tune, every single time. Still, a lot of the audience were in a kind of gaze during his show. Despite the popularity of Exco Levi internationally, it seems here at his ‘home’ in Toronto, Canada, there is still a lot of room for growth. Many would be surprised to know that in other territories where Exco is currently booked to perform, his influence and his music is so huge, that often, audiences are able to sing every lyric to the majority of his songs word by word! The story is so typically Canadian, but Exco Levi is a bigger star ‘there’ – than he is ‘here’! It might be 2014, but as embarrassing as it may seem, Canada is still playing catch up and has a blind spot for recognizing true talent even when it’s in front of their face!
