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St. Kitts honors dancehall star Byron Messia with a billboard and some Jamaican fans are questioning the motive

By Soje LeslieJune 22, 2023 5:08 PM

Byron Messia

St. Kitts is showing out big for its first international entertainer, Byron Messia, after he struck fame with his song “Talibans.”

On Wednesday, the image of a billboard welcoming visitors to the island nation dubbed ‘…the Home of Byron Messia’ went viral on social media. The billboard has a large photo of Byron and the YouTube, along with the name of the song, and over 26,000,000 views and counting.

“Welcome to the home of Byron Messia,” bold letters on the poster read.

The poster also lists several of Messia’s recent songs released over the last two years. The billboard was shared by a woman from St. Kitts who made the good decision to turn her comments off as Jamaicans swarmed the post caption, which read, “Well [Jamaican flag emoji] way u billboard?”

Jamaicans responded to her in the quotes.

“Do they know they can enjoy things without mentioning Jamaica?” one Jamaican wrote.

“Guys let’s give this small island a round of applause for their first artist that wouldn’t be nowhere if it wasn’t for Jamaican culture,” one added.

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“St Kitts is the weirdest Caribbean island by far they claim someone who’s not born in their country then try to diss the country he was born in the country that created the music he does. like dawg uno frighten fi 27m views jamaica smallest artist doing them numbers,” another person wrote.

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The artiste was born in Jamaica but was adopted as a baby and was taken to St. Kitts by his adoptive mother, who raised him on the island. Byron Messia has shared his support for both Jamaica and St. Kitts in recent times, but not without controversy, as he was dragged by Jamaicans after claiming that his style of music was not Jamaican dancehall but rather Afrobeat music.

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“The song in patois and him say ‘memba mi born Kingston’,” another said.

The competition between Jamaica and St. Kitts seems to stem from comments by Messia months ago that his music was Afrobeat with “griminess” and not dancehall-influenced despite one track being named after Jamaica’s anti-fraud organization.

The comment nearly caused the untimely end of his blooming career as Jamaicans became enraged at the arrogance displayed by the artiste.

He backtracked on the comment during a recent interview with Winford Williams, where he gave credit for dancehall influence on his music.

“Well, the storyline behind it, it is a dancehall storyline. At the end of the day, only we speak about dem situations and what not weh me a song about, Talibans. There is a debate about it being an Afro [beat] song but I won’t call it Afro [beat] song at all, it is a dancehall song.”