Dancehall Grieves ‘Merciless’!

I gen­er­al­ly stay away from pop-cul­ture top­ics, but I was struck by the com­ments of the man­ag­er of Dancehall artiste Merciless after the per­former’s passing.
Leonard Bartley, known to his fans as Merciless, passed away in a Kingston motel recent­ly from what is said to be nat­ur­al caus­es; how­ev­er, his man­ag­er and long­time friend ‘Gadaffi’ act­ing as coro­ner and psy­chol­o­gist, had his own ideas as to the enter­tain­er’s cause of death.

‘The music indus­try failed to appre­ci­ate and acknowl­edge the Olé Gallis dee­jay’s true musi­cal genius, and this ulti­mate­ly led to the entertainer’s untime­ly death’ ”
Seems to me what Merciless need­ed was a real manager!

‘When you’re doing some­thing, and you’re not get­ting the appre­ci­a­tion, it will affect you.”

True, but how is that the fault of any­one but the deceased and his man­age­ment team?

“We anno car­pen­ter boss, we are cre­at­ing music, and so you get reluc­tant to do things, you don’t have no ener­gy any­more, and you turn to drink­ing, the only thing he was resigned to was drinking.”

Not sure what the car­pen­ter quote means. Are car­pen­ters unde­serv­ing of respect?

‘He ran away to America, he came back to Jamaica because he got a lit­tle depor­ta­tion. But he left Jamaica because he was depressed. This is our cul­ture, we work so hard for it and peo­ple don’t appre­ci­ate what we’re doing here, every­thing was a major fight; one time, even artists did­n’t want to voice any dub­plates for Stone Love because dem say Stone Love play too much Merciless.”

Deportation can take a toll on any­one, I would imag­ine.

He want­ed the rat­ings, he want­ed the appre­ci­a­tion, he did all the hard work. He put in the work. He died from a bro­ken heart for the lack of acknowl­edg­ment for all the works he put in, and he turned to drinking.”
“Ah the rum and (an ener­gy drink) mix up do it, is two caf­feine togeth­er, you know how much peo­ple dead from it.”

And there you have it, the dan­ger­ous cock­tail that takes many lives, includ­ing Kevin Samuels Youtube sen­sa­tion who passed recent­ly in the United States.
The cock­tail of strong alco­holic bev­er­ages and ener­gy drinks is dan­ger­ous; health offi­cials con­sis­tent­ly warn about the use of ener­gy drinks that tend to speed up the heart rate.
We hope the pass­ing of Merciless will not be in vain but that we can learn some lessons from these trag­ic events.
Rest In Peace, brother.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.