Spice, Lady G and Queen Paula were in awesome form during last night’s ‘Dancehall Divas in Action’ show at the Fayor’s Entertainment Centre in Mandeville, but D’Angel, a controversial figure in dancehall, was roundly booed by the 3,000 strong audience throughout her entire set.

Central Jamaica is widely regarded as ‘Beenie Man country’ because other artistes who have attempted to smear him have got the royal boo treatment. Last year, it was Mavado, this time it was D’Angel’s turn. And she got the full brunt of the crowd’s animosity.

The writing was clearly on the wall even before her set began as whenever the emcee mentioned her name, a smattering of boos automatically went up. And as soon as she walked out on stage, the boos began in earnest, swelling like a black wave and gobbling her up. The venue seemed to quake under the mere force of the hostile shouts and vocal violence of the boos.

To her credit, she attempted to ride the cresting anger of the crowd, singing It’s Good Day, and got a few nods of encouragement for Downtown Girl, but the boos drowned everything else. At one point, she seemed to be performing to the musical accompaniment of boos, and whenever she shouted her signature phrase, ‘anso!’, the volume of the boos seemed to increase two-fold. When some fans began to walk out, the organizers were forced to turn on the lights in the venue to discourage anyone who might have wanted to begin hurling missiles at the stage to reinforce their point.

So the crowd suffered through D’Angel’s performance and she exited the way she had begun her set – with a chorus of boos. Emcee Lady Camille came out afterwards and made a half-hearted attempted at livity commenting that she “rounda backstage ah bawl wid Angel ‘cause dah boo deh nuh normal’.

While D’Angel was horrendous, Spice was simply superb and her promise to ‘talk de tings’ was met with huge cheers that almost competed with the intensity of D’Angel’s boos. She dissed the size of Beenie’s genitals, and elaborated on the gripping quality, circumference and pleasure derived from her vagina, and the crowd ate up every word. She exited the stage saying, ‘if yu waan hear more, come ah Sting’.

There were also marquis performances from Queen Paula and Lady G. Lady Saw held her own, Cecile represented, while DJ Sunshine earned one of the biggest forwards of the night when she played Beenie Man’s Give It Up featuring Barbee.

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