Mr. Vegas Says ‘Bob Marley Set Precedent For Women To Disrespect Rita Marley’

While several netizens found Cindy Breakspeare’s birthday tribute to ex-lover Bob Marley disrespectful as his wife Rita is still alive, Dancehall artist Mr. Vegas is holding the Reggae icon accountable for creating the discourteous situation. 

“They say don’t speak bad of the dead,” the Bruk it Down singer recently shared on YouTube. “I’m not speaking bad of the great king because I would like to be like the great king… I am speaking based on the facts… Bob Marley set the precedent for any woman that he has been with to disrespect Rita Marley.”

Like Ishawna, Mr. Vegas defended Breakspeare’s right to publicly speak on her romance with the No Woman No Cry singer. He pointed to Marley’s own treatment of his wife when it came to other women, including Rita having to sing background vocals on his love letters to Breakspeare – Turn Your Lights Down Low and Waiting in Vain. 

“(How comes) Cindy Breakspeare posting pictures of she and Bob Marley is a disrespect to Rita Marley, when Rita Marley had to be singing backup for Turn Your Lights Down Low when Bob Marley was alive? You’re stupid.”

Interestingly, Mr. Vegas said he was initially excited about pop culture’s defense of the Marley matriarch. He interpreted it as the mass embracing the Afrocentric beauty over the long-celebrated European beauty standards represented by the 1976 Miss World. 

“The beauty and the straight nose and the pretty hair…is that the people dem normally defend, so when I see the people dem a bun out Cindy…it coming like mi feel all a joy inna myself and a seh black people wake up… Rita Marley have the real ancestors look: the broad nose and the afro hair and all of them things… I see the people dem now a seh Rita and mi a seh yow, yeah man, coming like black people finally wake up… M feel black and proud.”

But upon deep-diving into Marley’s treasure chest of interviews, Mr. Vegas said Breakspeare was just a wife to Marley as Rita was. 

“Mi appreciate seh unno a go with the dark-skinned woman, but remember seh Cindy was not nuh likkle side piece. Cindy get title. Cindy was wife. Maybe ceremony and dem ting deh never gwaan and ring never put on, but Cindy was wife. Even based on Rastafarian philosophy, how Rasta look at dem empress dem, Cindy was wife.”

Consequently, “You see everything weh yuh see Cindy come forward a do, nothing nuh wrong with it. Yuh cya tell Cindy seh nuh rejoice and post when she waan post and put up Bob Marley picture dem and dem something deh.”

Marley and Rita got married in 1966, but he would later deny an actual marriage in a clip that has been making the rounds lately.

“Mi nuh believe inna marriage that much,” the One Love hitmaker said when probed about marriage.

He went on to say that he was “never” married, and reasoned that Rita was using his surname for ease of movement in the music industry. 

“Is a woman weh have babies fi me too,” he added before describing their relationship as “just a thing”.

Breakspeare revealed during a 2014 lecture in his honour that she was in the dark about a legal marriage until she gave birth to their love child, Damian ‘Jr Gong’.

Marley died in 1981 after falling ill from a rare form of skin cancer.