Elephant Man Dropped From Canadian Event
Toronto, Canada: Sep 29, 2007 Elephant Man has been dropped from today's third annual "Hotter than Fire" concert, in Canada, because of his homophobic lyrics. The concert billed as the largest post-Grape and Wine party of the season will also feature two soca acts from Trinidad &Tobago. Organizers ran into problems this year, though, when advocates with the Canadian chapter of a U.K.-based campaign called Stop Murder Music unsuccessfully tried to have Elephant Man and fellow artist Sizzla denied visas by Citizenship and Immigration. When that failed, the campaigners tried lobbying the venue owners to make them aware of controversy surrounding the artists. Akin Larcher, a spokesperson for the Stop Murder Music Canadian campaign, said Elephant Man's music contains violent anti-gay lyrics. Violent homophobia is rampant in Jamaica, said Larcher, who was born in the Caribbean. This year alone there have been nearly 100 documented attacks against gays and lesbians. Kevin Regis, owner of Regis Entertainment, said the concert is all about feel-good soca dance music and he had no problem removing Elephant Man from bill. However, he said, the artist's music has evolved over the years to include soca and he had assurances in writing that the controversial material would not be played. "It's going to be a little bit of a loss of money to drop him off, but the show's gotta go on," he said. "We've got two other artists in that show. Hotter than Fire is still going on as usual."

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