Busy Signal Still Doesn’t Answer Calls From ‘Unknown Numbers’
Dancehall star Busy Signal isn’t the face you’d usually see on the other end of an interview but he was quite the charismatic talker when he appeared on an Instagram Live show with British TV Journalist Sharon Carpenter last Tuesday.
In a lengthy 1 hour and a 30-minute interview, fans certainly got an ear load about “the international man of mystery,” who said he still doesn’t answer calls from ‘unknown numbers’ and who, by the way, follows ‘0’ people on Instagram and Twitter.
“Gangsta nuh answer nuh private call,” the deejay spitted in his 2007 hit track Unknown Number, which Busy revealed to Carpenter was inspired by a series of real-life events.
“I have bad experiences with private calls … back in the day,” he said. From fan-crazed women to insecure men incessantly calling his phone on private and unknown numbers back then, the Stay So deejay said it became too much and decided to stop answering— he subsequently linked his gold-selling producer friend Demarco and recorded the track.
Now more than a decade later, Busy admitted that he still doesn’t pick up!
The 42-year-old musician, who was promoting his new single Margarita, revealed that he’s a poor communicator; often failing to return calls and answer messages but the evolution of smartphones has helped somewhat. Thanks to Whatsapp and FaceTime, keeping in touch with friends and family has been better, however, Busy says nothing beats “organic” in-person interaction, and linking up face-to-face to perhaps play dominoes, fire up the grill, and just hold a vibe.
As for why he doesn’t follow anyone on social media, the deejay explained that it’s to preserve his creative space. “It probably will take away from my creative energy and take away from what I do to get busy,” he said.
“I don’t wanna take away from myself. I don’t wanna cheat myself, I don’t wanna rob myself… So it’s not like I’m bigger, badder than anybody else or nothing but I don’t follow anyone on Instagram.”
“I don’t make my whole life depend on this thing. I was an artist before social media. I was an artist before YouTube. I was an artist before these things exist so yes, these things help me but I don’t overdo it,” he continued.
Busy, whose real name is Reanno Devon Gordon, continued to highlight that artists who are so absorbed in the world of social media are inclined to follow others and trends rather than try to innovate themselves.
“Some people, they on this thing every day till they forget what they really do because they now follow people too much they become a follower. You don’t lead anymore, you don’t set trends anymore… you’re just going to be copying everyone, you’re not going to be original anymore. You probably trying to do what everybody trying to do because you see that something is trending, something takes off on TikTok so ‘oh, I gotta make a song like that’,” he said.
Referencing his latest release, Margarita, as an example of his out-of-the-box creativity, he believes “there’s nothing in the universe that sounds like that right now” because he’s in no way influenced by the noise on the Internet and social media.
For fans wanting a glimpse of the Bung Bang artist, they’d have to follow him along with his other 674k followers on IG and stay tuned for those sporadic occasions he decides to hop on a Live. “My fans, they know where to get me at and I do my little Live stuff and do them once a while. The last time I did one of those Live … was February,” he said.
Watch Busy Signal’s full interview on Let’s Go Live with Sharon Carpenter here –