Dancehall artistes Stacious and Queen Nikki have dropped the video for a new single on Friday, October 1, that sends a message of concern about the crime wave impacting their beloved island.

Called Dem Evil, the song was produced by Boysie Records and Iclips Records and mixed by Chris Goldfinger. The rhythm was created by Matthew Gentles, who also worked on Jamaica Spirit, Stacious’ winning entry for the Festival Song Competition earlier this year.

The video went up on Queen Nikki’s Vevo channel on Friday and will soon be posted on Stacious’ YouTube channel.

Stacious revealed that she wanted to do something different with this song given the state of crime in country. Jamaica continues to top the murder rate in the Caribbean with more than 1000 homicides reported since the start of the year.

“It’s a message to people involved in crime and the youngsters who we no want get fi go dung the road de,” said the 2021 Festival Song winner. “It’s to everybody in society. We need to get rid of this ‘informer fi dead’ mentality because if you don’t make a change, if you don’t say something, things will never change, you’re just going to continue saying ‘too much violence, too much time’, you have to make a change, starting with yourself.”

The song came about after Queen Nikki’s manager Andrew ‘Boysie’ Campbell reached out to her in July inquiring about the possibility of doing a song with the former dancer turned dancehall artiste.

She immediately agreed but with one caveat.

“I wanted the concept to be different from the usual independent ladies partying together. That’s all fun and good but I wanted a different vibe. So I spoke to Tension, who is a writer and artiste, who lives in New York. I told him my idea. I told him I wanted something (with a) message, something talking about crime and stuff like that,” she said. “He took that concept, ran with it and executed it perfectly. I couldn’t have done it any better.”