What does Vybz Kartel’s release mean for the future of dancehall?

Jamaicans often say to each other, “Jamaica is not a real place,” as we shake our heads at the beauty and madness of our birthplace. On last week’s episode of Jamaica Is Not a Real Place, a day before the country’s official Emancipation holiday, there was another kind of freedom: legendary dancehall artist Vybz Kartel was freed from prison after 13 years. The moment the news was announced, whispers shot around the island, from fancy boardrooms to the janitors cleaning them. Taxi men actually paused from their incessant honking, and local cellular services faltered from an overload of calls and texts.

Opinions about Kartel are split. Some would say his violent music corrupts the youth, that his release reflects the total lack of a Jamaican justice system, and that we are celebrating a murderer. Others hail him as a lyrical god mistreated by a system meant to oppress poor Black people. What no one can deny is that Kartel has defined dancehall music and has been inextricable from the fabric of Jamaican culture for 20 years, since the mixtapes leading up to his first album Up 2 Di Time. One Kartel fan told me on the day of his release that they were calling Emancipation Day “Kartelependence.”

Kartel left the Tower Street Correctional Facility in downtown Kingston on July 31 in a white limousine hired from a funeral home as supporters swarmed the prison gates. It brought to an end a 13-year prison stint that started with an arrest for cannabis possession, saw him tried and found not guilty for the murder of Barttington Burton, and in 2014 saw him found guilty of murdering of Clive “Lizard” Williams. A witness testified that he saw Lizard’s lifeless body on the floor, and police said they found text messages on Kartel’s phone referring to Lizard’s body as “mince meat.” Williams’s body was never found. Kartel was sentenced to life behind bars with no chance of parole for 35 years. His legal team continued to appeal the case until March of this year, when it reached the U.K.-based Privy Council, which overturned the conviction after finding evidence that a jury member had attempted to bribe other jurors. The Privy Council left it to the Jamaican court of appeals to decide whether to retry the murder case. They let Kartel walk free.

The only constant in life is change. Kartel, often referred to as the King of the Dancehall, has returned to a world where some would argue that dancehall, at least as he knew it, is dead. In the same way that dancehall once split off from reggae in the mid ’80s, we are in the midst of a new genre splitting off from the classic dancehall of the 1990s and 2000s, with the new genre heavily influenced by American trap. The new dancehall beats are harder, more a cousin of UK grime, the lyrics are more aggressive, with artists like Skillibeng, Skeng, Squash, Chronic Law, and Rygin King all paying tribute to Vybz Kartel while pushing his sound to new, less familiar territory. In this new world of rising princes, can the one-time king reclaim his throne?

Defenders of trap-dancehall dismiss its critics as old heads and chalk it up to a tug-of-war between generations. But there are those who see the new sound as apathetic, a bad copy of American mumble rap. “There’s an apathy to dancehall nowadays” one Kartel fan told me in a WhatsApp message the day he was released. “But you know what’s hotter than Gen Z and their endless glazed eye apathy? Nostalgia.” Kartel’s release may be an opportunity for people to reclaim what was lost when he slipped behind bars. “If we are lucky this will be the infusion of imagination dancehall has been missing for the last decade.”

It’s not just fans who could give in to nostalgia; it’s an industry of producers and artists, musicians around the world. Drake was (inevitably) posting pictures of himself in a Vybz Kartel shirt on social media. “What you have to understand is that Kartel went to jail entering the height of his career,” Jamaican musician Tessellated says that “him leaving shifted the trajectory of dancehall, and now we’re going to see a whole lot of international collabs coming in and it will be great for the culture.” Perhaps that excitement alone is what the culture needs. Kartel honed his skills in fierce competitions and toasting battles with artists like Ninjaman and Mavado. Kick-offs like Sting 2009 pushed the culture and music to new heights. What better way for Vybz Kartel to reinvigorate both the culture and his career than by fighting and besting an entire generation? It doesn’t seem like there’ll be serious beef with his contemporaries; Spice, Popcaan, and Mavado have all welcomed him home on social media.

He certainly doesn’t seem to have lost his fire either. His new album, First Week Out, which dropped the day of his release, is furious from the jump. Though Kartel continued to release music during his sentence, including hits like “Fever,” none captured the fire of his pre-prison records. But First Week Out has a glimmer of the old Vybz Kartel. The title of the album’s first song “Menace” seems to be a summary of Kartel’s intentions of returning to the music industry. On “Adiadiking” Kartel reminds his audience of his status: “Adi a di king! Any other king a Burger King.” He reminds listeners of his long reign: “’05 till now mi hold da lead ya, catch me if you can…” The albums only feature is Squash, Kartel’s long time protege and possibly the only person he may see as an ally right now, and on their track “Giant” Kartel even shows he isn’t afraid to play with the trap-dancehall style. One Kartel fan told me it sounds like he’s back for “vengeance and violence… and like he’s ready to rebuild his empire on the ashes of his empire.”

Dancehall songs can roughly be divided into two self explanatory categories, gun tunes and gyal tunes, and gun tunes dominate the tap-dancehall style that’s reigned since Kartel’s been away. You don’t have to spend long on dancehall social media to hear people demanding a return to gyal tunes. One Twitter personality penned a personal letter to Kartel on behalf of the girlies, begging for the return of gyal tunes. Kartel has been hailed by some as a feminist for liberating female sexuality with lyrics in the early 90s that celebrated women who gave oral sex, something that was considered blasphemous before him. (Kartel’s critics would point out that he failed to reduce the shame for women and it still remains taboo for women to receive oral sex.) The world has changed since Kartel went away; hopefully he can adjust to that new world now he’s out.

That takes time and energy though, and Vybz Kartel isn’t well. He’s reportedly suffering from Graves disease, a serious autoimmune disorder. At 48, he’s got experience on his side – but not youth. Still, First Week Out suggests he’s still got enough of a spark to make an impact on the culture he helped to pioneer. A whole country will be waiting to see the results.