From illness to image | Bog Walk artiste happy with half-bleached face
May 2, 2019Dancehall artiste SKP, who hails from Knollis district in Bog Walk, St Catherine, is pushing for musical stardom partly by bleaching half of his face and colouring half the hair on his head.
He told The Beacon that his recent image change has been working wonders for his music.
“Since lately, the response to the music is abnormal because the fans are gravitating to it now – worse mi have the new image now,” he said.
The artiste, whose real name is Warren Campbell, said people from as far as Africa have told him via social media that they are impressed with his presentation.
He writes mainly hard-hitting Dancehall songs, but does a few that have a cultural flavour. Some of his songs are Cool Like Sunday, Ghetto Life, and Harvest Time.
SKP, in elaborating on his image, said the idea to half-bleach his face is linked to his struggle with Atopic dermatitis (eczema), which makes the skin red and itchy.
“Since lately, I have eczema, but it wasn’t soh bright,” he explained, adding that a nurse told him that the eczema rash fits him well. SKP added his personal touch by bleaching the half of his face where the minor rash was located.
He also changed half of his naturally black hair to blonde to complement his half-bleached face.
“Mi duh the hairstyle to match the face in a different way,” the artiste declared. “It is definitely different from everybody else.”
The face and hair are not the only elements of the image SKP has been building; a lot of thought also went into his stage name.
When The Beacon first heard about him, we thought his name is ‘Escapee’ – as in someone who escapes custody. We were dead wrong! His name actually is SKP – an acronym that he said stands for Slave Know Pain.
The artiste, who attended Knollis Basic School and Tulloch Primary, said he started writing songs while he was enrolled at Bog Walk High School (now Enid Bennett High).
SKP, who recalls sometimes skipping classes to write music, said his producer is Von-Rae Cameron, also called Prince I-Rae, from Knollis.
His manager, Aswrick Tucker, who also lives in Knollis, said he doesn’t have much experience in the music business; neither does he have big bucks to give the artiste the ideal push.
He however told The Beacon that he has a keen interest in seeing a young talent from his community hit the national – and even international – stage.
“Wi a try push out the community… Mi would love to help a youth reach to stardom, soh mi try to push the music,” said the manager who has been around SKP for about two years now.
He, like SKP, does not have a big problem with skin bleaching – if it’s being done for a good purpose.
“Plenty things are wrong and people still do it. Him a dweet fi a cause; him a dweet because him a try get in the music industry; him haffi try something different,” the manager added.
SKP, in the meantime, told The Beacon that he is not perturbed by the commentary about his appearance – especially his skin-bleaching. “Everybody will have a different opinion; mi just doing my ting,” he declared.
By Horace Mills, Journalist
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