Lady Saw Still Got It! Missy Elliott Endorses Her Message For ‘Tun Back Christians’
American rap legend, Missy Elliott, has endorsed her colleague Minister Marion Hall, formerly Lady Saw’s message, for all dis-fellowed Christians to return to the fold.
On Monday, the Get Ur Freak On artiste retweeted a video clip of Hall’s performance of her gospel dancehall song Tun Back Christians at the Digicel Unplugged show, which was held on Sunday, May 24 and issued kudos to Jamaica’s most celebrated female dancehall artiste.
“Okaaaaay Yes… Come through Minister Marion Hall give us the word!!!!” she captioned the post, which evoked a flurry of comments from some of her followers, some of whom said they had no idea the St. Mary native had become a Christian.
Some Dancehall fans on Twitter were moved by the clip of the Unplugged performance, though it appears not in the way Minister Hall had intended.
“Nothing about Lady Saw gospel music makes me wanna repent. I be shaking a– same way, and that’s why I don’t listen to it,” said one fan.
“So you telling me Lady Saw does not want me to skin out to this jam?” added another.
One Twitter user declared, “You can take Lady Saw out the Dancehall but you can’t take the dancehall out of Lady Saw.”
Hall, who turns 47 on July 12, got baptized in December 2015.
Many fans seemed unaware that Tun Back Christians was the 10th track from Hall’s 17-track sophomore gospel album titled His Grace, which was released in July 2018.
The self-produced album features songs such as I’m Gonna Fast, Overflow, Love Like This, Gave It All Up For Jesus, and Walk On Water. Her debut gospel album, When God Speaks, peaked at number four on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart.
During her secular days as Lady Saw, Hall became the first female deejay to be certified as a triple-platinum artiste and won a Grammy Award in 2004 for Underneath It All with No Doubt.
As it relates to Missy and Lady Saw, the two women go way back. They fostered a working relationship just over 20 years ago when Saw featured on the track Mr. DJ , from Missy’s sophomore album Da Real World, which was released in 1999 and also earned a Best Rap Album Grammy nomination. The song was ranked number 49 of a list of Missy’s top 115 songs by Vulture a few years ago.
On December 13, 2015, Hall had revealed on Instagram that she had canceled all her dancehall events and has declared that she had decided to go back into the Church. At the time, she noted that God had spoken to her at the funeral service of young female artiste J Capri who had died in a motor vehicle accident.
Hall had also told The Jamaica Observer that God had instructed her to form a strong family unit, find a church and become an Evangelist. “I have used part of my life to serve the devil — all those things on stage. The rest of my life belongs to Christ and I am ready to work,” she said at the time.
She told the newspaper that shortly before her re-conversion, she was preparing to produce a raunchy album and had even started penning the lyrics. “I started to write the lyrics, got the ‘riddims’, and all now I can’t go and voice those tracks. I keep saying to myself how you doing a gospel album, and it’s like you are going back to that kind of thing…Well it’s a wrap… not going back,” she had said.
More reactions to Hall’s Unplugged performance below.
Watch the Gospel Edition of Digicel’s Unplugged here. Minister Hall’s performance starts at 1:20:00.