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Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted before the onset of the wildfires in Los Angeles.
revered and as reviled as Vybz Kartel.
Renowned for his inimitable vocal flow and incomparable word play, Kartel’s voluminous catalogue of self-penned gritty gangster anthems, blistering social commentaries, tender love songs, and outrageous X-rated ditties have established him as one of the greatest and most versatile dancehall lyricists of all time. Conversely, the violence and vulgarity depicted in some of his songs, his years of skin bleaching, his feud with dancehall artist Mavado (their volley of diss tracks eventually led to vicious confrontations among their respective factions), and the chilling allegations in his now overturned murder conviction have earned condemnation in Jamaica and beyond.
The magnitude of Kartel’s career was evidenced by the massive turnout for his Freedom St. concert in Kingston, Jamaica, on Dec. 31 — attracting an audience just shy of the National Stadium’s 35,000 capacity. The event was Kartel’s first performance in almost 14 years, having served, as he specified during a November press conference, “12 years, 10 months, six days and 14 hours” for the August 2011 murder of his associate Clive “Lizard” Williams.
The Vybz Kartel trial commenced on Nov. 18, 2013 and concluded on March 13, 2014, reportedly the longest hearing in Jamaica’s history. Prosecutors alleged that Williams and another man received unlicensed guns that belonged to Kartel; when the weapons weren’t returned, the pair was summoned to Kartel’s home, where Williams was killed. Williams’ body was never found. Kartel (born Adidja Palmer), and three other plaintiffs were found guilty of Williams’ murder.
The legal proceedings were tainted by allegations of police officers tampering with evidence, and a juror bribing other jury members to return a not guilty verdict. Yet, the judge allowed the case to continue. In April 2014, Kartel received a life sentence with eligibility for parole in 35 years; six years later, the Jamaica Court of Appeal upheld his murder conviction. Kartel’s lawyer, Isat Buchanan (son of legendary Jamaican toaster Big Youth) represented Kartel upon appeal; Kartel and his co-convicted were released from jail on July 31, 2024.
“I was always confident I would be released, and I had to reassure the others,” Kartel tells GRAMMY.com, pointing to a tattoo of the number 238 under his right eye. He got that tattoo in prison — a reference to the paragraph in his judgment that itemizes, among other concerns, the judge’s management of jury issues. “I knew about that paragraph years ago so I never lost hope,” Kartel says. “I’m so blessed: I came out of jail to two grandchildren and a career that’s bigger than the one I left.”
Kartel also came out to a fiancee, Turkish born, British raised Sidem Öztürk, transforming from a “gyalis” (involved with several women) into a “one burner” (monogamous), a status he references in his recent single “The Comet.” “When I was in prison Sidem stood by me,” Kartel reveals. “A woman who was there for you at the roughest times should benefit more than anybody else.”
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The Freedom St. concert began with a brief retrospective of previous Kartel interviews, performances, and newsreels showing his arrest, his trial and ultimately, his release from jail, beamed on the enormous screens suspended above the stage. Kartel slowly arose from a platform beneath the stage, dapperly attired in a three piece pin-striped charcoal suit, greeted by the sustained, resounding din of air horns, vuvuzelas, and the entire audience on their feet cheering. Kartel’s first song was his 2009 hit “Hustle The Money,” undoubtedly chosen for its fitting lyric: “mi nuh have time fi nuh jail time/dat a waste time/mind ‘pon mi money and mi money ‘pon mi mind.”
Despite his diagnosis of Graves’ disease in 2016, and years of imprisonment, Kartel did an impressive job alternating between performing and introducing his guest artists over a span of nearly four hours. They included Ghanaian dancehall star Shatta Wale, rapper Busta Rhymes, upcoming artists Likkle Vybz and Likkle Addi (who are Kartel’s sons), and several acts formerly associated with his Portmore Empire (a.k.a. Gaza). Among the latter were Shawn Storm (also celebrating his freedom), the exceptional vocalist Jah Vinci, and the empire’s most successful alumnus, Popcaan.
Also joining Kartel was Spice, stunning in a royal blue and white ensemble with matching full-length topcoat, boots and a crown befitting her dancehall queen status. Together they delivered a dynamic, sexually charged performance of “Ramping Shop.” Released in late 2008, “Ramping Shop” was both artists’ first Billboard charting hit, although it was banned from Jamaica’s airwaves, with Spice declaring, “this song changed my life.”
Veteran deejay Bounty Killer, in a brief appearance, congratulated Kartel on this new chapter in his life, acknowledging his former acolyte’s talent and stature in the dancehall pantheon: “Youth, you are a lyrical genius, phenomenal. You aren’t taking anybody’s throne, you built it independently.” Responding to his mentor, with whom he had an acrimonious split in 2006, Kartel humbly stated, “I learned from the best.”
Kartel dropped his latest album, Viking (Vybz Is King) 10th Year Anniversary, on Jan. 31. The deluxe edition of 2015’s Viking (Vybz Is King) features four of the album’s original cuts (including “Unstoppable,“ which urges ghetto youths to work hard and achieve their dreams, and the anthemic, celebratory “Dancehall“) alongside seven new tracks, all recorded after his release from prison.
Three months earlier, minutes after learning his EP Party With Me was a 2025 Best Reggae Album GRAMMY nominee, Vybz Kartel spoke with GRAMMY.com at Kingston’s AC Hotel. In a wide-ranging interview, dancehall’s Worl’ Boss discussed his incarceration, health, prison reform, finding God and renouncing real life gangsterism.
It’s great to see you again. Thirteen years is a long time to be incarcerated. Do you have flashbacks of your time spent there?
I do have flashbacks and I’m still processing my freedom. Going to prison for 12 years, 10 months, six days and 14 hours took a toll on me mentally and physically. The last two years I was in a maximum security prison.
The cell was maybe 10’ x 8’, so I had to sit with my legs in a crossed position, which took a toll on my muscles. I did my first yoga class yesterday to help my muscles and I have a personal trainer so we’re putting in the work. In 2025 we’ll hit the ground running.
In an interview with the Guardian, you said that “gangsterism has had a negative effect on the youth.” Will you stop writing/recording gangster songs?
No, I’m changing the man, not the artist. Let the artist be the artist, like, let Denzel be Denzel, star in a movie as a gangster, or a policeman or a preacher. But in my real life, there’s no support for gangsterism, no illegal stuff, no guns, nothing.
After I started making money [in music], I didn’t have to be a gangster, but I still was. I’m not making excuses, but it had a lot to do with how we grew up; I’m now telling the kids, bro, it’s dumb, it doesn’t mean anything. I had to figure that out the hard way; people have figured it out in harder ways, like being maimed and in a wheelchair or never coming out of prison.
I feel like God gave me a new lease on life [Kartel points to the tattoo on his forehead that reads “Love God”]. I was never too religious. Now, I can’t wake up or go to bed without praying and giving thanks to God.
Did your relationship with God start because it helped you cope with being locked up?
No. I was never doubtful about gaining my freedom, even when it seemed hopeless. Finding God just felt right. In prison you have a lot of time; I love to read, so I started reading the Bible. I fell in love with faith and I started praying. Then I said, “God, if you can get me out of this, I will never stop calling your name, never stop teaching the youths to stay on the straight and narrow,” because the Bible says that words without works are nothing.
In the 2000s, Josef Bogdanovich (CEO Downsound Entertainment, promoter/producer of Freedom St.) was involved in the Rehabilitation Through Music program, which gave Jamaican inmates opportunities to legally record music. Singer Jah Cure’s signature hit “Prison Walls” was recorded through that program. Are you looking to create a program to help prisoners with musical talent legally record songs?
Yes. I am registering a charitable organization and prison reform is what I’m focusing on. My children have a charity; they grew up much nicer than I did, so they give back. But I want to create my own charity, hire people, work on a specific agenda and the music program is my primary focus. I’ve also partnered with a lady who feeds homeless people, so that’s the direction I want to take and lead by example.
I also want to petition the prison system to change some of its laws. For example, guys who are found guilty of non-violent crimes should be under house arrest or fined, not put in maximum security prisons with dangerous thugs.
Veteran Jamaican singer Ken Boothe had a 1970 hit called “Freedom St.” Did that song inspire the title of your concert?
Yes and no. In Jamaica, when people get locked up, outside of the prison we call it Freedom St., which is probably where Ken Boothe got it from.
In an interview we did in 2020, I asked how you recorded the music that was released while you were incarcerated. You didn’t directly answer. Now that you’re out, can you discuss your prolific output while imprisoned, which includes eight albums, and 50 singles released in 2016 alone, and how those records were made? After a few years in prison, the recording quality really improved.
For the earlier songs I would usually sit out of the bunk [bed] and record. I figured out the iPhone 5s had amazing recording quality. In recording studios, padding keeps the sound in, so it doesn’t sound metallic and echo when it hits the wall. I had two phones, one playing the riddim, I have an earpiece in, and I’m recording a cappella, kneeling down, with the mattress wrapped over my head and the phone a few feet away from my face. I had to peep because if a warden or a [correctional officer] is walking by, he can see me.
That’s how I recorded, and the quality got better because the mattress imitated the studio padding. “Fever” was done that way, so was my GRAMMY-nominated album Party With Me.
You served your sentence in different correction facilities. Why were you moved around?
Mostly it was done as a punishment because of [whispers] the recordings. The warden was pressured: Why is this man allegedly recording in prison? Nobody ever knew, well, they knew, but they didn’t know. If I am singing about a product that came out in 2018 and I was arrested in 2011, well…I did what I had to do, because that’s my job.
2016’s “Fever” was recorded in prison and received a RIAA gold certification in 2020. Your first GRAMMY-nominated EP Party With Me was also recorded in prison. Was it a career goal to receive a GRAMMY nod?
Receiving a GRAMMY nod is big, it’s great, but it was never a career goal. A career goal for me, actually for the entire reggae/dancehall industry, is to sell music. I believe in the commerce of our music, that what Jamaican artists offer should be represented with a larger scale of numbers.
Jamaican artists perform everywhere. But our record sales/streaming numbers have to increase to make sure dancehall is in the same space where we can say, yes, that’s Drake, or Mavado or Kartel. Sean Paul and Shaggy do that on a scale, but it can be bigger. My career goal is to sell records like Pink Floyd. With proper promotion, marketing, more tolerant lyrics and more commercialized music videos, I think it can work.
You’ve been involved in some of the most notorious episodes in dancehall’s history, including the brawl with veteran deejay Ninja Man onstage and the feud with Mavado. Would you have handled those situations differently today than you did at that time?
If I were the person I am today, there wouldn’t have been those situations. Again, it’s how we were raised, the ego of poor Black men; we started making money, so our egos got big. Funny enough, the last two prisons I was in, Ninja Man [Editor’s note: he is currently serving a life sentence for murder] and I were on the same block. The last two years, I was literally put in a box within a box and we talked from behind the fence. He is one of my two favorite artists, the other is Buju Banton.
Mavado was always my brother, but we were on some Cain and Abel s—! Now we talk all the time. Funny enough again, Mavado’s son [Editor’s note: Mavado son is also serving a life sentence for murder] was in the same prison as me. Mavado’s son was my son’s best friend when they were going to prep school. Throughout the feud, my son went to his parties and he came to my house, while me and his father were going at it.
In your 2012 book The Voice of the Jamaica Ghetto, you share your views on issues affecting the country, including crime, politics. Do you plan to write another book about your incarceration?
Yes, I have physical notes from when I was in my cell, writing my thoughts. Maybe it’s a book about change, and not harboring bitterness, but definitely there’s going to be a book about that journey.
You have always been an extremely prolific artist. Tell me a bit about your new album Viking (Vybz Is King) 10th Year Anniversary.
Viking is a classic album, and since it came out exactly 10 years ago, it was the perfect time to bring it to the forefront again, revitalizing and re-upping the hits and adding some new Vybz Kartel.
With the latest songs, I am really just out here having fun, vibing out with my friends again in the studio, so I think many of the new songs reflect that playfulness, like “Str8 Vybz” and “#AmOut.” And of course, I have to give thanks to the one above who made it all possible, so I wanted to open it with “God Is the Greatest.”
Also I’m working on a new studio album, closer to summer, but still in no rush, just enjoying family and life.
