Entertainment

All name, no fame

By GERMAINE SMITH, Staff Reporter

LA Lewis - file

THE NAME LA Lewis is many things to different people. For some, the images of his name splashed across Kingston's most prominent concrete walls and utility poles are outright flaunts of the Anti-Litter Act. To others, these scribblings represent the grittier unrefined side of aggressive street marketing at which scholars marvel.

Love it or hate it, although mainstream Jamaica may not know the man behind the name, the name LA Lewis hits your memory because of the strategic spots where the scribblings are placed. They dot a good length of Marcus Garvey drive, Arnett Gardens, on one of the entrances to Tivoli Gardens, inside Vineyard Town, East Kingston, the Six Miles Roundabout, and a good number of obscure streets and lanes around the city. Legend even has it that two scuba divers swam several metres below the sea in Portland and saw the words 'LA Lewis Wuz Ere' scribbled on a rock there.

"Mi real name is Horace Stephenson Lewis. Mi born inna Rema, Trenchtown, and grow up mongst nuff big artist," LA revealed in an interview this week.

He also reveals that he was the first to start writing his name on the walls.

"A we start do it originally but people catch on, and cause we used to dance all over the place yu understand, we and the fresh boys dem, we used to just popular," Lewis explained. Dem time deh, we have fame already. A no yesterday, we have fame; we have fame from we a little youth and a go a school."

Fans underground

"Mi automatically get a crew and a mi a the leader, the Home Boys crew, so the crew just write up mi name all over the place yu understand. So automatically we start grow fans underground, yu understand, and we name all reach a foreign cause 75 percent a the crew go a foreign and so dem carry the name LA Lewis all over the world, cause a so the name get spread so far, yu see me."

Under the old, Litter Act of 1986, a conviction for the offence may lead to fines which begin at $1,000 and climb upwards, plus jail time starting at six months is possible as well. (The present act under which it falls is the Solid Waste Management act, for which the fines have been increased.)

"We never get inna no trouble yet, cause wha we do we never really write up we name and start no public mischief or nutten like dat. When time mi crew even write up mi name mi nuh write it myself. We naa dis nobody or say anything weh a go affect the children dem. We promote peace and unity with the LA Lewis slogan, he stated.

Deputy Superintendent of police Doric Sinclair who heads the Kingston East division said that LA Lewis can be charged under the Anti-Litter Act for the scribblings, but that he does not feel that anyone will arrest him. "He can be charged but I don't think anyone will arrest him because he has not been seen in the act of writing anything," the Superintendent explained.

LA admitted however, that the days of name scribbling writing are long gone for his fans, as he is into new things. Along with his publicist Roggen Hunt, he is courting movie deals, and is looking at scoring mainstream hits for 2005.