Alkaline Mercilessly Mocks Skillibeng In New Song ‘Sell Off’

Vendetta fans have been having a field day today, highly convinced Alkaline is making a mockery out of Skillibeng, or has joined him in an attempt to prove that he too, is highly competent at penning Nonsense Rhymes, following the release of his new track Sell Off.

Sell Off seemingly mimics the Crocodile Teeth artist’s flow and use of Nonsense Rhymes to comprise his verses and hooks in songs such as Yo!. The enamored response to the Champion Boy’s use of Nonsense Rhymes, has had though, a starkly different response when compared to Skilli’s use of the literary style.

Where Skilli was jeered, the Top Prize artist’s use of the said device, has been met with cheers.

A Nonsense Song is defined as a track written and recorded mainly for the purpose of entertainment, injecting nonsense syllables and unintelligible phrases and sounds at least in the chorus.  Such a song generally has a simple melody and a fairly quick tempo, as in the case of Yo! and Sell Off.

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Skillibeng, Alkaline

Sell Off which scored 50,000 views within a three-hour span on YouTube, is laid on a Trap beat, akin to the beats preferred by Skilli.

“Hi of di above, God bless love,” Alkaline says nonsensically in the intro.  And, in a manner akin to Skillibeng’s mutterings in Yo! he adds some whispering sounds.

The former Media and Communication major then proceeds to sing an unstructured string of words, in a jeering manner, aimed only at rhyming.

“Curry and kitchen and chicken and wing/airport stick an bankrobber napkin,” he sings in a nursery rhyme fashion, interjecting ever so often to say; “Dat sell off!”

“Dem a gwaan like dseh di music nuh nice/Pon di floor/every crew,” Alkaline adds in another bout of gibberish, later adding: “More bottle come if yuh love yuh life/put dem up/han inna di air…”

Vendetta fans did not hold back as they took to YouTube to enjoy the joke, and jeer Skillibeng, who has been accused recently of penning a diss song titled Internet War, which was said to have been aimed at Alkaline.

“I get the feeling this is a Alka freestyle mocking Sillibeng 😂😂😂😂😂😂,” CentLess Channel, while ItzA’Kela added: “Alka just use Skillibeng flow and kill him wtf”

“Yes He’s mocking someone 😂😂 all i can say he is a 🐐,” an impressed Nordia Henry said.

One follower, A PUB G, missed the intent, but was set straight after he wrote: “Alka start smoke rum my g I know he’s a strategist let’s see what his next move, forever vendetta but this must be a freestyle, ppl stop being biased this is like on skilli writing level Respectfully”.

“Common sense ppl. Skilli diss him, so he’s just trolling. This is just the beginning. I can’t stop laughing 😅🤣😂😅🤣😂,” Kat Liv said.

Other Vendetta fans, declared that Alkaline had outdone Skillibeng, using his own style and patterns better than he did.

“Him do skilli better than how skilli do him self 😂😂😂,” Official Pringles said.

“Add a “brrrrrrppppppp” and then yuh hear the full Skilli flow on it 😭😭,” Aisha Green teased.

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Skillibeng

At the time Skillibeng released Yo! the St. Thomas native’s YouTube channel, had been inundated with snarky comments, as critics and fans of the entertainer declared that he had apparently ‘lost his mind’ and relegated him to the laughing stock of Dancehall.

Even Unruly artist Quada had joined in the mockery of Skilli regarding the song which was filled with absurdities, while vloggers and Dancehall pundits Lets Be Honest, had expressed worry that Skilli was overdoing things and was no longer paying attention to penning proper lyrics with the depth of Crocodile Teeth.

Yo!’s most popular line which had people doubling over with laughter was found in the first verse, where Skilli intonated, in a rather toddler-like manner, of how he engages in a shootout with the police, escapes from them and then out of nowhere, starts smoking his ganja, getting high in the process.

Sell Off and Yo! are though, no different from Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance which starts off with gibberish in the intro which also comprises the hook, as well as her Pokerface and Alejandro, which, from a literary standpoint are Nonsense Songs or have Nonsense Lyrics embedded in them, as is Rihanna’s Dancehall song Rude Boy.

In fact, some of the biggest Dancehall songs out of Jamaica have been Nonsense Rhymes, among them King Yellowman’s Zungguzungguguzungguzeng, Mr Chin, Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt, and This Old Man, an interpolation of a nursery rhyme written in 1906.

Beenie Man too, has also had his share of nonsense rhymes and verses including Who Am I (Sim Simma) and Romie.

Tunedly.com, an Interactive Online Music Production and Publishing company, has pointed out in the past, that Nonsense in songwriting “does have a place in society”, and that there have been “quite a bit of literature about pop artists turning to nonsense lyrics to make hits by injecting lyrics considered wacky or going against the laws of grammar, into their songwriting’.

It noted that many superstars, chief among them Elvis Presley have, from long ago, turned to nonsensical lyrics in attempts to entertain their fans.

According to them, the Hound Dog singer hooked fans with not only his voice, but also “through using lyrics that defied comprehension at times”, relying heavily on “catchiness and gimmickry to deliver many of his hits”.

Presley they said, used nonsensical lyrics to such a tremendous effect, that they played a big part in elevating him to a pop icon. “Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine,” a line from Presley’s Hound Dog is among the nonsense lyrics referenced since catching a rabbit is not a requirement to be someone’s friend.

The reasons given for artistes to write nonsense include: to generate interest in the song as people tend to spend a lot of time trying to figure out lyrics that seem meaningless, and to create a “cool” hook that gets stuck in listeners’ heads or to ‘create filler lyrics when the songwriter wants to place emphasis on existing lyrics, or is trying to create a dramatic bridge or ending to prevent the song from sounding monotonous’.