1 month ago
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Ocho Rios-based dancehall veteran Mikeylous has joined a growing list of artistes to record songs in support of Burkina Faso’ president, Captain Ibrahim Traoré.
Since Traoré became president after a coup in 2022, he has done countless positive things in his country, drawing praise from African all over the continent, but riling western leaders.
Mikeylous’ track, Ibrahim, is on the Darker Shade of Black “riddim” and was released April 26 as an Abassanjah production on the Star Trek label.
Mikeylous is happy with the response to the song.
“The response has been great, great, great! Mi a get response from Africa hard, mi a get whole heap ah airplay in the UK, the US. Mi ah get overwhelming response on social media; from the first week it came out overseas disc jockeys started reaching out to me. Based on what I know so far I am the only Jamaican artiste to sing about him,” Mikeylous said.
He shared that at two of the recent pro-Traoré demonstrations in London, his song, Ibrahim, was playing.
Mikeylous joins several artistes in hailing the leadership style of the 37-year-old president. A country’s leader getting so much support from artistes across the world is unheard of. Outside of former Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie, who Rastafarians glorified in songs, no other leader, African or otherwise, commanded such admiration in song. And while Selassie’s adoration was from Rastafarians, this is bigger, as artists from Africa, United States and Jamaica have voiced their approval of the young leader.
“I think it’s because of his age and he’s just doing different things from regular politicians. I don’t call him a politician, I call him a leader and we’ve never seen anything like this. Former president Thomas Sankara talked some things like this (what Traoré’s taking about) and they assassinated him. He’s doing things for his people and his country more than what presidents in power in Africa for 40 have done,” Mikeylous
This man is taking his country’s destiny in his hands and that is what leaders across the world need to do; I hope that a lot of leaders in the Caribbean will follow this man’s footsteps because this man is just 37 years old. He could be my son,” Mikeylous said.
The entertainer said he has been following the Traoré’s journey since last year and got the inspiration to write the song earlier this year while exercising one morning. A video for the song is in the making.
Mikeylous has been in the music business for close to four decades. Shortly after Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, Jamaica responded positively to a song titled Bad Min’ a Kill Dem by the duo of Peter Metro and a then new DJ called Nigger Mikey. He would later change his name to Mikeylous owing to the fact that overseas the word ‘nigger’ was deemed to be offensive. While touring Europe in 2000, Mikeylous realised the negative impact that his original name was having on his career, and thanks to deejay Junior Demus he came up with Mikeylous.
Among his better known songs are Ting Deh on the Penthouse label, Man a Wall and Macarena Dance.
English (US) ·