THE HARD TIMES AND SWEET FREEDOM OF VYBZ KARTEL

It’s New Year’s Eve, and the roads that lead to Jamaica’s National Stadium are filled with food vendors manning their oil-drum grills.

- NATALIE MEADE

It's New Year's Eve, and the roads that lead to Jamaica's National Stadium are filled with food vendors manning their oil-drum grills. Some sell orange bandanas like the pair Vybz Kartel wore when he walked out of the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre five months earlier, on 31 July 2024. Jamaicans from across the island have taken Knutsford Express buses into Kingston, and foreigners have booked nearly all of the hotel rooms in town to see Freedom Street, Kartel's first concert since 2011.

Inside the open-air arena, which is also home to Jamaica’s soccer team and its annual independence ceremony, fans yell above the vuvuzelas. A little after 11pm, the house lights go down and Kartel rises up from beneath the stage wearing a grey pinstripe suit with gold trimming made by Solomon's, a Trinidadian tailor. “Yo, yo,” he says. Thirty thousand people erupt, and he launches into his opening song: “Mi nuh have time fi nuh jail time, dat a waste time / Mind pon mi money and money pon mi mind.”

Kartel has been one of Jamaica’s most celebrated entertainers since the early 2000s, when he established himself on the dancehall circuit, recording mixtapes that were shared across the Caribbean. In 2009, he achieved a new level of fame with ‘Pon de Floor’, a collaboration with Diplo’s Major Lazer project, and he vaulted even higher when that song was sampled on Beyoncé’s hit ‘Run the World (Girls)’, earning him a co-writing credit on one of her signature anthems.

Fifteen years ago, Kartel was one of the country’s brightest success stories. He had made it out of the ghetto, crossed over into the mainstream, and represented Portmore, his hometown, at every turn. But in September 2011, he was arrested on a flurry of charges including marijuana possession and homicide. Two and a half years later, he received a life sentence for murdering an associate named Clive “Lizard” Williams. Kartel has always maintained his innocence.