Sex still sells - Fans thirsty for raunchy content

Dexta Daps' recent sexually explicit short film for songs from his album 'Intro' has brought much attention to his career in recent days, but dancehall artiste Double X believes the singer should have been getting his due because he has always released good-quality music.

The raunchy video with songs like Owner, Grow Rough and Only U, was released last week and already, it has got more than 800,000 views on YouTube. The video has sparked much discussion and persons have also created memes with clips and lines from the production.

But according to Double X, fans of music should focus on the quality of music instead of forcing the artistes to resort to extreme means to satisfy their sexual taste buds.

"I feel that nowadays, it's all about social media. People believe everything they see, and if somebody pays someone to do something controversial, they buy into it. People nah listen the good songs anymore. And it starts with the DJs, because if they are not playing the music, fans can't get a chance to love it," he said.

The artiste feels social media has forced the hands of other artistes to go to extreme lengths for attention.

"The artistes come in the game now and they see that people will follow you and like up your things if they sell sex or do strange things, so they are going to go that route. Mi just a focus on making world music because if you do the slackness, then you will have to continue on that path and maybe start dropping your pants on stage," he told THE WEEKEND STAR.

"Social media is also an illusion because not everybody who has more followers than you are actually more popular. T.O.K, for example, has the strongest following in Japan, with 127 million people, but they don't follow up Instagram like that. I am working on an EP now and I am looking to target places like Japan and Germany because music is global."

Dancehall music promoter Stampede agreed that social media fans can be thirsty for sexual content at times. However, he believes Dexta Daps ought to use what works for him best.

SEX APPEAL

"I agree that he wasn't getting the attention even though him a do good songs. But the girls dem see him as a person that have sex appeal, so they support that over even positive songs. So give them that. You have artiste who a do positive songs, but dem not promoting their songs, so it won't hit," he said.

Popular mixtape disc jock CD Banging added that sex has kept the mixtape industry alive and has always had a place in dancehall irrespective of the popularity of social media.

"When I sell CDs, the dirty versions sell more than the clean ones. If people want clean music, they can go and listen the radio. That is why people purchase mixtapes because we give you authentic and raw content. Sex has been in dancehall from Yellow Man and Shabba Ranks' time," he said.

Artistes like Demarco, Tommy Lee Sparta, Ricky Carty and Don AndrÈ have all released sexually laced music videos to promote their songs in the past.