Respected Zimdancehall pioneer Slaggy Yut says “Beenie Man is a liar”

Zimbabwean dancehall pioneer Slaggy Yut, also known as Daddy Slaggy, has rubbished Jamaican superstar Beenie Man’s claim that he helped bring life to Zimdancehall, saying the genre had long taken root before the famous chanter set foot on Zimbabwean soil.

Daddy Slaggy is the man that is usually credited for giving the sub-genre its name.

Last week, Beenie Man made headlines when he claimed that he not only inspired the Zimbabwean strain of dancehall that has become popular in the country over the years, but also coined the term Zimdancehall itself.

In an interview with The Standard, the UK based Daddy Slaggy said the Jamaican star was peddling false claims, as he only came to Zimbabwe when the genre already had a lot of faithful disciples that were pioneering its growth in the country.

“Beenie Man is making those claims yet he only came to Zimbabwe in 2010, for the Castle Lager festival.

“I was one of the people who was promoting the event on my website www.zimdancehall.com after Mark Redguard linked me up and in return I got exclusive footages courtesy of RawtidTv who travelled with Beenie from Jamaica,” he said.

Daddy Slaggy said contrary to Beenie Man’s claims, the country’s dancehall artistes already knew how to handle themselves in the studio before he came into the country.

“Those are false claims, he is talking as if we didn’t know how to record or produce before he came, and he talks of going in the studio and telling them what to do when he never went into the studio with any ghetto youths.

Artists like Red Rat, Turbulence, and Christopher Martin did more for Zimdancehall and they all recorded with artists in Zimbabwe before Beenie Man came,” he said.

Daddy Slaggy went on to chronicle Zimdancehall’s humble origins.

“As for Zimdancehall I was a dancehall artiste in Zimbabwe in the 90’s with Cruxial Mix Band led by Ras Jabu with Bobo Markos later (3 Wisemen), then early 2000’s I relocated to the UK around Wolverhampton area and that place has so many Jamaicans so I started sending some of our Zimbabwean dancehall songs to the local pirate deejays I knew and most of them were saying it’s not dancehall this is African dancehall.

“So I decided to create a platform to push our music and that’s when I came up with the website www.zimdancehall.com, which was the first platform where people from all over the world could listen to dancehall music from Zimbabwe.

“Since in Zimbabwe the internet was still dial-up I had to work with another artisteMar Fisher who was based in Zimbabwe that time.

“I would send him money to go to all ghettos where he called for songs then put them on a CD in MP3 format and post them then I uploaded them that’s how we worked from 2006 -2010 until the internet situation improved,” he said.