Why Dancehall Superstar Alkaline Is Exceptionally Great

In hindsight, it’s fair to say that Dancehall Superstar Alkaline, was and is, ahead of his time!!!

Alkaline Is Ahead Of His Time

The first clue that this is the case, is the Artist’s name: Alkaline. Alkaline first starting releasing music at the young age of 16 years old. Now, which 16 year old do you know that has the drive and the foresight to release music under the name Alkaline? Let’s keep it all the way real. In the Caribbean, some of the youth are exemplary, with bright minds, future’s and smiles.

On the other hand though, many of our youth have no sense of culture, history or tradition or, their own identities. Instead opting to portray what social media and television has shown them success is. To go further, many of our youths today only know KFC, so there would be no chance of them being able to choose a name like Alkaline, which speaks to the intelligence, consciousness and individuality of the Vendetta Boss.

The Proof Is In The Live Performance.

People can and will, say what they want to say about a Dancehall artist. Opinions, whether right or wrong are just that opinions. What can carry far more weight though is actions, and more specifically, live performances.

At the end of the day we are just human beings living our everyday lives with the hope that we will survive and make it through another day. Staying alive is a full time job, that demands a lot of our attention. We have academic demands, relationship demands, our emotional needs. Plus, as Bruce Daisley in The Joy Of Work points out, our devices, help ensure that we are always contactable and therefore capable of being distracted. For all of these reasons and more, we may be unaware of how great an artist is at any particular point in time.

However, when it is the moment of truth, i.e. performance time. An artist gets to show a crowd of people – and by extension – those people’s people, via social media, word of mouth etc, just how great they really are.

That, is exactly what Alkaline did.

It’s very easy to tell when an Artist has delivered a top tier performance because those performances are absolutely full, of highlight moments!!!! With the popularity of social media platforms like: Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts etc. There is a clear social media demand, for short video content lasting a minute or less normally and no more than 3 minutes.

Therefore, as content creators, we are incentivized to meet this demand by capturing the highlight moments from a performance. Again, Alkaline never disappointed and instead made this process easy as Alkaline literally, made an epic entrance.

Then kept the vibes going all performance long until it was time to then, make a grand exit. What Alkaline did was embody the immortal words from Jay-Z from his huge hit Encore:

“Grand opening, grand closing”.

But this time, it was the man himself, the Vendetta Boss Alkaline, who was cracking the can open again!!

Perception, Versus Reality.

Now, here is the thing. Do Caribbean artists have a media industry that guarantees an epic performance from an artist, will get the recognition it deserves? The answer is probably no! The artists that have the most motion, or influence in music, are the artists that get covered by media companies based outside the Caribbean. The most notable music industry in the Caribbean is undoubtedly Jamaica. This truth is even evident via looking at the most viral and viewed videos from our YouTube channel. In our top five we have 3 Jamaican artists: Jada Kingdom (2), Shenseea (3) and Romain Virgo at number (4). Alison Hinds has the top spot and Kassav have the 5th spot.

However, when it comes to the Jamaican Media, whilst there are exceptional platforms like National Newspapers, The Fix JA and On Stage TV. Those platforms are primarily centered around covering what Jamaican artists are doing in Jamaica.

In other words, there is a coverage gap, when an artist like Alkaline, performs in Trinidad and Tobago for example. Moreover, media companies based outside the Caribbean, have a greater capacity to broadcast and therefore impact people’s perception of an artist’s greatness. Simply put, our platform, www.islandlove-wi.com is doing a much needed job of capturing the actual greatness on display when Caribbean artists perform. Our role in the grand scheme of things, is to help close the gap between people’s perception of Caribbean greatness and the reality.

Grammy Family And The Location Gap

Now, when it comes to greatness, location is everything. Whilst greatness is undoubtedly universal. We all have certain biases or lens’ tied to the locations in which we live. We all speak a certain way, have a certain vocabulary or slang and have what amounts to the local example of celebrity.

For this reason, musical expertise wherever possible, is best derived from the source i.e. locally. Admittedly, Caribbean people have a long and unfortunate history of underappreciating and even undermining its own. Nevertheless, jealousy, envy, betrayal is present everywhere, world wide. However, allowing (local) people to have priority in describing Caribbean progress is ideal because that way, nothing gets lost in translation, so to speak.

A perfect example of this is Davido, who was recently on the Breakfast Club explaining that Afrobeats is actually a term first popularized by mainstream media outside of Africa. Afrobeats Artists simply went along with the name based off of the momentum the term had riding behind it. Admittedly though, as Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet teaches us: a rose is still a rose, regardless of what it is called.

However, what Davido’s explanation shows is that location gap is real and the best experts on developments in music can often be people based in the same location as the artists.

Arguably, though, the world is now online. Which means a dedicated fan can access everything their favorite artist does. This is of course true, nevertheless, it is still likely that people from the same communities as musical artists, may have a keener appreciation for where an artist is on their musical journey, simply because they have had more exposure to that journey firsthand. Conversely, factors like knowledge, experience etc can mean that the best experts on musical developments are based in mainstream markets. The point here is that things can go either way and location bias can be relevant in good or bad ways or simply just irrelevant.

Some interesting evidence of this is award ceremonies like the Grammys. With music fans in the Caribbean wanting categories that reflect the genres of music present in the Caribbean. Furthermore, whilst everything is online. It is still true for us to remember that Soca, Reggae, Dancehall, Afrobeats, even Hip Hop all live offline and have very clear and specific roots based in Trinidad, Jamaica, Africa and America, respectively. Just as global consumers are happy to accept and perhaps prioritize, US platforms chronicling developments in Hip Hop. The same should be the case for Caribbean platforms covering Caribbean artists. Finally, the Grammys are a work in progess – everything that is human is.

However, it would be remiss of us to ignore the time the Grammys picked American Reggae band Soja to win Best Reggae Album in 2022. The outrage – particular amongst Jamaican/Caribbean Reggae fans was real because simply put, Soja’s music has a lot of room for improvement. Revolt, blatantly accused the Grammy’s of whitewashing, but it is enough to point out that Soja’s music is simply unworthy of a Grammy especially when compared to the music put out that year by the likes of Spice, Sean Paul, Etana, Gramps Morgan and Jesse Royal.

One of the most meaningful quotes that explains the motivation for this platform’s being is:

“Until the Lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter“.

On this occasion, we saw clearly, the Grammys being guilty of seeking to glorify their local talent.

Alkaline Was And Still Is, Ahead Of His Time.

So, what does all of this mean, what point are we trying to make here?

That Alkaline is ahead of his time. We are telling you that Alkaline always has been one of the very baddest artists in Dancehall that moved to beat of his own heart since childhood and the Vendetta Boss is the exact same beast he always has been.

If you are having trouble seeing that it is because you probably need to book a ticket to see Alkaline live as soon as possible!!!! Alkaline remains unchanged. What may have declined though is the ability for Dancehall fans to see that! In Dancehall and sports, there is always a steady stream of new talent that can make it increasingly challenging for other Dancehall artists to hold on to the status they have thus far attained.

Watching Alkaline perform though, let’s us know one thing, whilst new Dancehall Artists can better compete against Alkaline in the recording studio and in terms of music sales. One place very few Dancehall artists will ever be able to compete with Alkaline is on stage!!!!