Landslide At Verzuz Polls For Bounty, Beenie As Jamaica Votes

By: Admin

Image caption: File Dancehall legends Beenie Man (left) and Bounty Killer.

In a September 4 article titled, ‘Fans pick Bounty Killer vs Beenie Man as the best ‘Verzuz’ battle yet’, Billboard magazine announced that the Jamaican legends came out on top in their polls. In fact, Bounty and Beenie, both of whom Billboard left off their much-talked-about Verzuz tribute cover, controlled the lion’s share of the votes, so much so that it didn’t even look like a poll was necessary.

Some fans of the artistes have taken offence at how Billboard presented the results for the dynamic dancehall heavyweights’ indisputable win. “And location was key here: Their Verzuz battle won with a whopping 88% of the vote, and 44.6% of the tally’s total votes came from fans in Jamaica,” the Billboard article stated. It’s not even worth the hassle to try and to figure out what Billboard was trying to imply with this statement. What Billboard should also have pointed out is that 43.4 per cent of the votes, therefore, came from outside of Jamaica. Anyway, fans are only too happy that Jamaica showed up.

EIGHTY-EIGHT PER CENT VOTES

Billboard’s attempted slight aside, the figures are quite interesting. With Bounty and Beenie easily securing 88 per cent, that means that the other 18 Verzuz battles had to scramble to see which would get the largest share of the remaining paltry 12 per cent. According to Billboard’s polls, R&B singers Brandy and Monica took home second place with single digits – 3.53 per cent of the votes. And Billboard made sure to try and smooth things over by inserting, “But both ‘90s icons broke Verzuz records, organisers say, by pulling in more than 6 million views Monday night (August 31).”

Hip hop artistes DMX and Snoop Dogg couldn’t even muster a solid three per cent, their total was 2.97 per cent, but it was enough to pull off third place, for their late July ‘Battle of the Dogs’. Erykah Badu vs Jill Scott amassed 1.32 per cent, and all the others raked in less than one per cent, and this includes Verzuz creators Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, whose battle received 0.15 per cent of the votes.

Among the other below one per-centers were Alicia Keys vs John Legend (0.82 per cent); Teddy Riley vs Babyface (0.54 per cent); T-Pain vs Lil Jon (0.46 per cent); Kirk Franklin vs Fred Hammond (0.38 per cent); Fabolous vs Jadakiss (0.37 per cent); DJ Premier vs RZA (0.3 per cent); Rick Ross vs 2 Chainz (0.28 per cent); Ne-Yo vs Johntá Austin (0.27 per cent); Ludacris vs Nelly (0.25 per cent); 112 vs Jagged Edge (0.21 per cent); The-Dream vs Sean Garrett (0.07 per cent); Boi-1da vs Hit-Boy (0.06 per cent); Ryan Tedder vs Benny Blanco (0.02 per cent) and Scott Storch vs Mannie Fresh zero per cent.

yasmine.peru@gleanerjm.com