ALKALINE & SQUASH BEEF CREATES RISING TENSIONS _Fans fear it could turn physical

Could the Alkaline and Squash beef turn physical?
Members of the dancehall community fear the ongoing feud between the Vendetta and 6ix camp out of MoBay could become more than just a musical clash. Last month, Urban Islandz reported that Squash threatened to put hands on Alkaline on sight. Even though he said it in his diss track ‘Pinocchio’, he added that he was dead serious about it.

Some folks inside his 6ix circle are of the view that he is angry that his rival mentioned his late brother, who was killed by the police.

Reputed Jamaican psychologist, Dr. Leachim Semaj, recently weighed in on the topic, pointing out that there were certain parallels between this lyrical war and past feuds in dancehall like the infamous Gully/Gaza feud between rivals Mavado and Vybz Kartel. If you’re too young to remember the details of that feud, it went way beyond dancehall music, and involved entire communities going against each other. It even spilled over into schools, where students would pick sides in circumstances that often turned physical.

The Gully/Gaza feud eventually made its way outside of Jamaica and spread to the broader Caribbean and other markets that heavily consumed dancehall music like North America, Europe, and parts of Africa. The remnants from that war can still be felt in dancehall a decade after Mavado and Vybz Kartel called a truce.

“A lot of people have no life outside of their music hero so that identification becomes out-blown and can become ugly,” Semaj noted in an interview with the Star. “Oftentimes, even if it is imagined, the persons involved really have no desire to calm it down because it creates more excitement for them.”

So far, the Vendetta/6ix war remains a lyrical battle of who has the better disses, but there are some fans, a minority, who are taking to social media to showcase weapons, perhaps in an effort to prove which side of the divide has the ‘badder’ supporters. This is potentially problematic as those fans could take things to another level and hurt fans of the other side, even as the artistes keep their beef on the airwaves.
What do you think?