‘Simma’ announces that Beenie Man is ‘still here’ - But artiste cuts album launch appearance short

In an interesting turn of events, Beenie Man's Simma, the body of work that announces that he is "still here", saw him being absent towards the end of the launch on Monday night, after he left abruptly, without even cutting his specially made birthday cake.

"He's not feeling well ... he has been experiencing some stomach issues and is going home," Beenie Man's manager, Rohan 'Blue' Davis explained Monday night to the media after the entertainer had to cut short one of his interviews because he needed air.

Prior to that, however, Beenie Man, who turned 50 on Tuesday, had put on a jovial face and shared the album with his well-wishers at the red carpet event held at Di Lot on Constant Spring Road, St Andrew.

Rather than give a live performance of the songs, which is the norm, Beenie Man shared the story of the song and then instructed the selector to play the track. Of course it would be a stretch to do so for all 20 tracks, but the point was made -- Simma is an eclectic body of work which is chockful of collabs offering mix of dancehall, reggae, Afrobeats and drill.

MC Richie B has already chosen the "big tune" off the album and former manager, Patrick Roberts, rated Simma as "a very good effort".

Simma, Beenie Man's 17th studio album is a follow-up to Unstoppable (2016).

To fill the gap on Monday, Blue stepped up to the plate to fully answer some of the questions originally prepared for his brother.

"People think that Simma has something to do with Sim Simma, but it doesn't. It's just his way of saying 'Easy ... just chill ... I'm still here'. It is a project that I am proud of," Blue told THE STAR.

He shared that originally, the idea was to put out an EP, but the decision was later made to do a full album.

"An artiste of Beenie Man's status needed more than an EP. As it is right now, we put out 20 songs and have enough material for two more albums," Blue said.

Of the 20 songs, only three feature Beenie Man alone, and Blue admitted that at one point it looked as if Simma was going to be a collab-only album. Busy Signal, Pato Ranking, Giggs, Banks, Shenseea, Mya, Dexta Daps, Hood Celebrityy, Bunji Garlin, Shaggy, Popcaan, Anthony Red Rose, Dre Island, Sean Paul, Louie Culture, Stonebwoy, Morgan Heritage, Charly Black are all featured on Simma.

One artiste whose absence sings loudly, however, is Bounty Killer and when asked why this was so, Blue said that his team had reached out to Bounty and they had come to an agreement.

"It was just for us to send him a riddim when we found the right one and for him to do the same, so we would have collabs on Bounty's album and Beenie Man's. But is like we never follow through. There is one song which I identified and told the producer that Bounty would be good for it - Superstar - with Beenie, Sean Paul and Anthony Red Rose. Although the release date is August 31, it might still happen," Blue said.