Entertainment

5 Questions with Junior Kelly part 4

Junior Kelly

WITH GREAT POWER comes great responsibility, they say. So today, Junior Kelly states what he would do if he became the country's prime minister tomorrow.

"Yu know seh running a country is not an easy thing to do. I woulda prefer to use the term that if I become one of the 'biggest influential persons' in the society, I would implement certain things in the society.

"Mi waan the readers fi know seh before we can do anything, we need fi get rid of our debt, so that foreign countries can stop dump dem products pon we and tell we seh it can sell cheaper than our home-grown things weh make our farmer them suffer.

Music can pay debts

"The music can pay our debts dem, cause it's a billion dollar industry per annum, if not more. I woulda implement or enforce sound scan. To people weh no know, it keeps a direct check of the amount of records weh sell inna Jamaica.

"Secondly, I would incorporate a locally-based international record company. If I were the PM and I call the head of BET and invite him to discuss business here because we are now the big company, and all the little reggae labels dem who no comply, we put dem out of business.

"They are the ones who are hustling out the music and the artistes dem and the musicians and the people dem inna the country. If the PM call up Mr. BET and say 'let's do business', you will find that reggae get more international, cause everyting come under one umbrella.

Big money in music

"When a man get him cheque it fat so inna the music. How we fi have a multi-billion dollar industry and none a the money don't come back here in Jamaica?

"It's not that our music is not good. They always come up with the politics and say that the videos are not good or something, and we know that our music is so influential on the world scale. Can you imagine if we have a giant company in Jamaica and have the support of all these people in the industry?

"Yu find out seh, we have a company where we can demand things from the world, and make them listen to us. Our artistes then wouldn't have to hope and pray to get signed from a foreign company. They would get signed by our own Jamaican international recording company that is regulated by the government.

More money from the industry that is scattered around the globe will come back to we ... we no have no factory, so we must realise that the biggest industry we have is reggae.

"If we can set up our company weh set up our own satellite and beam our own music into space and into people's homes internationally, that's how we want to do it."