G- Unit Ambassadeur et Plénipotentiaire

As the intoxicating bass speakers thumped into the sweat filled backs of the hypnotized crowd, only the dew water of morning and the foreplay of after party bliss must have been on the minds of Putt Putt patrons. But the ninth of February 2008 was to be no silent morning, as a band of gangsters sprayed the night club Al Capone style, sacrificing as collateral damage a 17yr old female, Deandra Zetina. Deandra was a very pleasant girl. From the spunk in her step and her stringy physic no one would wager that this sickle cell anemia patient would be erased at the opposite end of gun smoke.

And as we think back to the news cast of that date, we try hard not to remember what happened to the clan of urban terrorists who were caught red-handed with the hot bag of smoking nine millimeter pistols. But pssst!!!! Psssttt!!!!! Just to keep it one hundred, I am gonna inform you that they all got away. Yap scotch free!!!! It is almost as if they were rewarded for being bold enough to foreshadow the current era of criminal lawlessness and murder under Barrow’s UDP watch.

The truth is that night club shootings, politics and Barrows’ have more common denominators. In fact, on December 27, 1999, what is described as a fracas broke out at a Manhattan nightclub where Jamal “Shyne” Barrow, together with his gang of friends used their “ninas” to shot up the club. In that fiasco, a woman was also shot in the face, tenk God she neva dead. But this felon has also been rewarded.

Jamal Barrow was forced to come back to Belize, less we all forget, this is the last place the boy wanted to be. One hip hop magazine exposed the fact that this was only the second time that he has returned to this little mosquito filled “kinel” side country. Lately he was trying to abscond to the UK and was snubbed in that escape attempt.

Back in the Big Apple, the convict’s attorneys argued long and hard to get Barrow special treatment. Barrow tried every trick in the book including the Torah, fully accessorized with a school boy hair cut, a freshly launched brand name and paid hands from Harvard (or at least the fashion). If I memba right el Gobierno de Belice went so far burning diplomatic favors and sending letters to the Governor of the State of New York, to get around the deportation laws.

So here we are. After full consultation with Yellowman and Hutchy, Barrow appoints his son Jamal Barrow, musical ambassador. Pump the brakes there, boss. Hold up, wait a minute. “Ambasa” what? Stop play, big man. Did you know that an ambassador is the highest-ranking diplomatic representative of one government to another or to an international organization?

This is no 1.5 million in untendered legal contracts for Lice, or the one shot big-payoff case for Deany, or the apparently biased Court of Appeal Judge appointment, or the jacking of BTL for “lotto And War” to play with. We talking here, as the new dancehall artists say “to the world” ambassador.

Look yah, an ambassador is a formally defined and recognized status under the Congress of Vienna (1815). They are regarded as personal representatives of their whole country. Before the development of modern communications, ambassadors were entrusted with extensive powers and even today they retain the honorable power of being spokespeople for their foreign offices. Long and short, ambassadors are the equivalent of ministers, but not just any minister, a minister of the highest rank with plenipotentiary authority to represent their head of state. Wow!!!

Now, I am as catholic as everyone else believing in the redeemable nature of the human soul but I don’t understand how come under section 58 of the Constitution, a person is disqualified from being a minister if they are convicted of a “sentence of imprisonment exceeding twelve months”. But Barrow makes Barrow an ambassadorial minister?

Excuse me but didn’t Barrow recently lick down ten years!!!!! Amabassador????

Tell me one more time, this boy has a post that comes with all the trimmings of an ambassador, including a diffran kahlah passport and immigration courtesies like security clearances and paid travels? He is an ex-con, people. Still thinking like one too. In fact the boy is still singing about running gangs and moving “ki’s” and shooting “gats”.

In a recent song this man, who is representing you is saying: “I’m rocking sideways, motherf@#$#r crime pays I need it, I get it, I got it, I chop it, I double the profit and bubble the pockets. I’m living to die. Niggas talk fly till I walk by And pop something. you mother@#$#rs forgot something I’m not fronting. This ain’t rap. music. This ain’t that.” Yeah, that is the way all our Belizean Ambassadors talk!

My grandmother likes to say “more deh out dan weh deh een.” On the latest track that the self proclaimed gangster for life released on DJ Khalid’s album entitled “All my life”, he appears with notorious foul mouthed rappers like Akon “the illegal alien” and Movado whose visa has just been revoked by Uncle Sam for reasons that we all know. In that song there are still references to “running with the b’s and the c’s”, (Crips and Bloods gangs?) Boasting in a hard bunk toilet voice about “ducking police”; running streets; living slowly to let us “read in the F.E.D.S.” and no fear “to put a bullet in his skully cap”, wow!!!!!  I can see why America is trying to keep these kinds of men out of their country but then there is Belize, here we bless them as ambassadors??? Hmnnnn? Cho, my boy!!!!!

Don’t tell me that he is just the musical ambassador because that is expletively oxymoronic on so many levels. The birthing of cultural ambassadors which has been toxically mutated into Jamal Barrow’s commissioning, is the vision of NICH whose maiden idea has been soiled. In the post Independence period, Belize has had cultural ambassadors to the quality of Joan Duran, Andy Palacio and even Poots “the Titiman” Flores.

Now I am told that Flores who was appointed after the recent change of government did not hold back on Two Cents Cam to verbally flip the bird on the new appointment. In fact Flores, the outgoing ambassador was informed of removal the same way NICH was, which is courtesy of the UDP press office, the Channel 7 Department.

Imagine! A convicted felon is our musical ambassador. Jamal Barrow is no Bob Marley or Bono and not even a shadow of Andy Palacio. In fact, it would be easy to argue that Barrow is the antithesis of a Belize Music Ambassador. Reading a few of the old blogs and interviews from the expelled rapper reminded me that he has strong convictions about two things. One is that he has utter contempt for Daddy Barrow who he condemns as a cold hearted sperm donor. And secondly: in various magazines including XXL the boy emphatically views himself as a “Brooklyn artist”, in none of his interviews did I find any reference to Belize. Nope, none!! Hip-hop is as culturally representative of Belize as blue grass is to the China.

Who is Jamal Barrow in Belizean Music? In American music he is a “godfather” sort of, and that is independent of what rap lord Mr. Fifty Cents says but, on the Belizean music scene no one would use him as an example in the game of Taboo to describe Belizean cultural music. If you ask Tony Wright, he never thought of inviting Jamal Barrow to “Belizean Artists past and present”, real talk.

Speaking of that, this is not like the law where the UDP tell Belizeans unu incompetent so they want to bring foreigners to be Ministers. No, there is a host of faithful, rabid UDP and royal creoles who could do the job. What about high wasted, Jason Guerrero, Bro. David Obe, Lord Rhaburn or Gina Scott? But the biggest loser is Berne. If I were him, I would be vex vex vex!!!!!! Sorry bro, you no name Barrow!!!!

On second thought let me take back all my opposition to Jamal Barrow’s appointment as musical ambassador. Look at it this way, an ambassador is a reflection of the country they represent. Right now, Belize is in a gang like dictatorship and a nepotistic rule of Barrow. Belize has become a violent place under Dean, so lyrics of Shyne Barrow in the one hit wonder “Bad boys” like: “ashes to ashes dust to dust, I bang and let your f@#$king brains hang” pretty much sums up the evening news. I take it all back, Jamal Shyne Barrow is the perfect ambassador of music for Belize under the UDP and I am glad that we could have squandered an ambassadorial appointment just so that he could sort out his immigration problems with the UK.  In fact let’s make the gang members who killed Deandra ambassadors too. After all we had Vat man knighted and Morgan “the Bombman” was O.B.Ed. So why not? God Save the Queen!!!!!!!!

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