Dear Vybz Kartel

As a rule, I've tried to keep the whole light-skinned versus dark-skinned debate off Dear Whoever, because it's simply a matter of preference and one's own self-worth when dealing with what skin shades they find attractive. Skin color is something that has hotly been debated in the black community for well over a century, with the 'paper bag test' and other ways of excluding anyone thought too dark to make it.

That said, I nearly vomited when I saw the above picture, Vybz. I'm holding no punches. You. Look. Turrible (Charles Barkley voice). You look like Tyrone Biggums' estranged Jamaican cousin. Those lips are ashier than the crackpipe you smoked to come up with the 'cake soap' idea. I don't know whether to call your condition jaundice or to just pronounce you dead. You are now what the Native Americans would call a 'pale face', which is ironic, because I'm sure the rest of you is blacker than an S of spades. I had no clue being a proverbial human zebra was in fashion.



Vybz, what made you think that cake soap was the solution to your own self-hatred? What's the matter? Have you been brainwashed that bad that you think the only way to continue your debatable success in dancehall is to be lighter-skinned? If so, you're sadly mistaken. The only dancehall artist with lighter skin to truly have a big break was Sean Paul, and he isn't even fully black! (Portuguese, Chinese and Black, if Wikipedia serves me right) If you're really doing it to improve upon your success, then why not take a page out of Beenie Man or Buju Banton's book (sans the cocaine trafficking in Buju's case) and... I don't know... make good music? 'Clarks' was a catchy tune, but can you really make a career of unofficial endorsement songs?

Regardless, the 'cake soap' product placement, no matter how much you claim it to not be a medical recommendation, will catch on like wild fire fiyah in Jamaica and you know it. A generation of young Jamaicans are going to see you and think the only way to salvation is through light skin. How DOPE is that? As if years of socioeconomic control by the British wasn't enough, here you come telling kids that dark skin is wrong. With brainwashing this good, who even needed slave masters? When we can brainwash our own selves, who needs overtly Caucasian standards of beauty? Kudos to you, Vybz. If anyone could undermine over a century of progress for blacks and make themselves look like a spectre in the process, it was you. I only hope all that 'air conditioning' that turned you into a walking dust bunny can make you disappear...