Jamaican reggae star Beenie Man says he’s not a homophobe, worldpop.com reported Sept. 10.
The British activist group OutRage! called a boycott of Beenie’s new single, “Feel It Boy,” a duet with Janet Jackson, charging that earlier Beenie Man tunes advocated murdering homosexuals.
“My single has nothing to do with gay people,” Beenie told worldpop. “It’s not killing no gay people, it’s not looking out against gay people. I have nothing to say against gay people. The more guys that are gay means more girls for me. I don’t know why they’re against my single.”
He said accusations that his earlier songs advocated killing “chi chi men,” Jamaican slang for gays, were incorrect.
“They come and say we say chi chi man, and we cuss gays as chi chi men. Chi chi man is the name of a person, it’s the prime minister,” he said. “We wanna cuss the Jamaican prime minister but we cannot say the prime minister’s name on record because you be going to jail. You call him a chi chi man. It’s not like we cussing nobody else, we cussing the Prime Minister. We have nothing to say about gay people, everybody’s just getting the wrong idea.”