What started as a random beef about who was a better artist between Alkaline and Squash has turned into a full blown feud with death threats. Alkaline released his highly anticipated reply to Squash’s diss track Pinocchio. Death Announcements, continues the Vendetta-6IX feud having amassed 701k views in 3 days on Youtube’s streaming platform.

The tension has gradually built, from subtle jabs at each other in tracks to full on attacks in diss tracks. I made mention a few weeks back of the situation degenerating to childish levels. The artists fed into the burning of t-shirts by fans on social media, further retweeting and co-signing the sinister gesture. Squash came out last week threating the Vendetta Boss provoking the artist to a physical fight and now we have a track throwing around death threats casually.

It is all gold material for the media and fans to lap up, but, where do we draw the line? Jamaica already has a well-documented violence problem and when you have scenarios like this it doesn’t really help anybody. It’s one thing to keep it in the music as punch lines but when things degenerate to fights and death threats we need to reign things in. I am not saying the situation could end up there but the hardcore violent nature of what transpires filters onto the young listeners.

These artists have a responsibility to their fans which comes with their popularity. They are role models and due to the fact that their demographic of fans is of the young generation they need to carry themselves with a little more tact.

Going back to the song. 9/10 for Alkaline. He delivers a heavy reply which puts him back in pole position in this feud. Expect another track from Chronic Law or Squash soon, but I hope this is the last from Alkaline. Just let it go for now, and make regular songs.