Get caught up with the trending lyrical war between Guyanese artistes

DISCLAIMER: Reader advisory. Article contains images with explicit language, derogatory remarks and links to uncensored music.

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The lyrical war between four Guyanese artistes has been the talk of the country for the past couple of weeks. Whoever didn’t know these artistes existed, certainly knows them now. Azariel (Kristoff Sauns), cKush (Kareem Lewis), Stiffy Stiff (Delon Garraway) and DJ Magnum (Dorrell Romeo).

Last evening, promoters brought the battle to the stage at the Kingston Beach, one that ended in a physical altercation between the said artistes. It appears that members of Guyana’s Music Industry are too emotionally fragile to promote a clashs culture within it. However, with the several lines that were crossed in this battle, one would have expected some amount of physical aggression when the artistes are placed on one stage.

If you haven’t been following the clash, here’s the synopsis you need. You can click the links to listen the songs in their entirety.

It all started January 16th, when outta nowhere, DJ Magnum for whatever reason(s), felt like he was being compared to “Tint Man” (Azariel) and was highly offended by that. So much so, he initiated a lyrical battle, releasing the first diss track in the war, “Cant Compare“.

It started off as a typical dancehall war tune, but took a drastic turn when he said “Tint man feel him a star, and Drew Thoven ah touch him gyal. Him ah di biggest gyal clown overall. You know him still go engage after all? Choose a Donkey-Chowmein over dhal. Think ah lie, go ask Kerwin and Rawle…” Woahhhh! Now everyone needed answers. Drew did what now? The cover photo of the song also displays the Guyanese star, Drew Thoven and Azariel’s fiancée in the background hugging tightly and a photo of the fiancee and Azariel, with his face painted as a clown.

People on Social Media went wild over the allegation, and close friend of Drew, another Guyanese artiste – ‘cKush’, started posting Facebook statuses that could be taken as him confirming the allegation, naming another alleged partner, “Imran”. I believe this is what earned him a line in Azariel’s response.

Azariel waited no time to defend, January 18th he dropped “Publicity Stunt“.

– where he accused Magnum of being a ‘fish’, child molester, attention seeker and a broke. Surprisingly, no one really ran with the pedophilia lines, and exposing Magnum as an offender of statutory rape. But rather, it was the line “Ya see the cheerleader one wuh geh drop from Kabisa? Lwlss ready when yuh ready. Yuh like throw shade and yuh like play bad pon di media, keep the energy when yuh see mi.” That took everyone’s attention. WHO’S THE CHEERLEADER ONE?? Without even having to call his name, everyone knew Azariel was referring to cKush.

Safe to say at that point, Magnum started to become irrelevant and everyone wanted to hear from the cheerleader. Andd… well, the cheerleader was ready – Shabooyah roll call! He (cKush) lyrically plugged out on Azariel in his release on January 19th “Bring it on“, naming also Guyanese artistes, Stiffy Stiff and Radikal. At this point, these guys started playing ‘tag, you’re it!’ with this war.

Let’s talk about the plug out though. It was “dark and deadly”. Subtle is definitely not in cKush’s vocabulary. This was probably one of the most disrespectful response in the history of lyrical wars between Guyanese artistes. In fact, this had the most views on YouTube with over 64,000 people. Guyanese live for the ‘sesh’! Safe to say cKush broke the internet when he explicitly detailed what could be deemed as the alleged promiscuous sex life of Azariel’s fiancee. This caused some amount of social media frenzy, as the song dissed the fiancee more than it did Azariel. Which can also be interpreted to mean, her alleged debauched lifestyle was the only found ‘flaw’ that subsequently became the subject of the war. These allegations turned the heat up in the battle, as all the parties in the squabble got more and more ‘dis’respectful in their releases.

But at this point the people’s attention shifted from Magnum, because they hadn’t recover yet from emotional damage caused by cKush and wanted to hear what Azariel would have responded with. But he (Magnum) released “Donkey Chowmein Lover” nonetheless, attempting to confirm some of allegations made by cKush.

Now with the way these replies started coming so quickly, the fans wanted to know if this entire thing was staged??

But it really wasn’t.

The very next day Azariel responded with “Aunty Karen Daughter” – claiming that it is because cKush couldn’t ‘lash’ his (Azariel’s) fiancee, he opted to bash her in the song. “When a girl single she could f**k who she wan,”Azariel said. Which sorta implies that the allegations are probably true, but it wasn’t during a time when they were together. However, in a subsequent interview with the fiancee, she denied all the allegations and said she was taken by surprise since she had never interacted with most of the people named. “none a dem can’t diss my fiancee, beautiful like Beyonce…”

Clean comeback, full of class. But was it enough to take our minds off what cKush said?

Stiffy Stiff jumped in with “Chainsaw teeth” after being addressed. Stiffy Stiff is also a lyrical genius with a proper flow. Truth be told though, the most relevant people in this war were Azariel and cKush, as those two seemed to be the only two that people were talking about at this time. The clash between the two appeared to get extremely personal and took the interest of clash lovers, and well, every Guyanese who just wants to mind the business.

Appeasing the people with another ‘plug out’, cKush dropped another track – were we prepared for “Bring it on AGAIN“? Heck no. But we listened anyway.

Stiffy Stiff and Magnum tapped out as it was evident the focus shifted to cKush and Azariel.

Azariel responded with Back to Back and ended his input to clash with Burial.

cKush released Bring it on All or Nothing and ended with CLASS.

Promoters wasted no time to jump on the rivalry, releasing a flyer confirming all the artistes involved in the clash, on one stage at ‘Masharama’. This piqued the interest of many fans who were eager to see how civil these artistes can actually be in the same space, after publicly exchanging such brutal words towards each other.

The stage opened with several other artistes such as Louie Banks, Mattic Queen, Lil Million, etc, performing their original music, but it was clear that patrons went to witness the clash.

Stiffy Stiff opened that half of the show. He performed his input from the war, along with freestyles directed to cKush, who later came on with his posse (Drew and Gully Ras).

Magnum followed Stiffy Stiff and was highly offended and upset with the promoters for putting him before Azariel. In his performance he added more commentary to his dis track, calling out mostly Azariel.

The trio (cKush, Gully Ras and Drew) performed their popular songs then gave the floor cKush to sound his dis tracks.

He too performed a freestyle, responding to Stiffy Stiff and addressing Azariel.

But the Lwlss fans were loud on the beach as he was introduced to the stage after cKush’s performance. Some tension started at this point after Azariel requested that Drew and cKush come off the stage for his performance. They refused and that resulted in a minor altercation on the stage.

The performance went on nonetheless, with Azariel going off on all the prior performers, excluding his fellow west-sider, Stiffy Stiff.

It was an interesting exchange which demonstrated that Guyana has a lot of lyrical geniuses with an extensive vocabulary.

Patrons were then entertained by Tony Matterhorn that had everyone laughing as he was giving his review on the clash in a comical way. During his performance, fight broke out backstage between a bunch of people, some artistes involved. Police were able to calm the situation and the show went on with Matterhorn juggling, followed by a performance from Kwasi Ace, and then Tempa from Trinidad.

Now we wait to see what comes next for these artistes. Will we get another clash? A fight? Will they become friends and do a collaboration? Time will tell.