Move Over, Nick Cannon! Ninjaman, Elephant Man Take Spotlight For Fathering More Than 20 Children
The issue of veteran Jamaican artists having dozens of children with a long list of women took center stage earlier this week, with incarcerated Dancehall superstar Ninjaman and Elephant Man being placed in the spotlight to the amusement of their compatriots.
Ninjaman was thrust into the spotlight earlier this week, after Dancehall star Cham shared an old video of bantering between the Don Gorgon and journalist Emily Shields, regarding his fathering of then 23 children from almost the same number of women.
That interview had come in the aftermath of Sting 2002 when the Murder Dem deejay turned over a Glock pistol onstage to revered Police Superintendent, Reneto Adams.
“How Many Children You Have? 23… 22 Baby Mother!!! 😂ninjaman_music 😂😂😂😂 Legend!!” cham captioned the video which showed Ninjaman alternating between glaring at Shields and batting his eyelids, as she asked his age.
“Right now at mi young age, Mr. Young, Bold and Beautiful, I am 37 years of age, the 24th of this month,” was Ninjaman’s comedic reply.
When asked: “How many children do you have?” Ninja responded, again comically: “23 – 22 baby madda. I was batting careful, I’m a good cricketer”.
In response Shields shot back: “If you were batting careful, how did you manage to have 23 children?” to which the St. Mary native immediately replied: “Because I lick all a di runs dem. I neva out fi ducks.”
In 2012, five years before he was sentenced to life for murder, Ninja told the Observer that he had fathered another 6 kids, bringing the total to 29 children with 28 women.
There were expressions of amusement from Razor B and TOK’s Bay C, and an interesting comment from Dancehall singer Stacious who pointed out that Ninjaman’s brood, since the interview, had increased by 10.
“He now has 33 with 32 baby moms. Lol #dongorgon 😂,” she wrote.
Elephant Man, who in May this year, said he was the father of 20 children who look up to him as a role model, was also the brunt of jokes following the publishing of a Star article on Friday, quoting him as saying that he sees nothing wrong with persons having multiple children as long as they are able to take care of them.
The Pon Di River artist’s comments had come after he was asked to “weigh in on recent discussions surrounding American actor and TV host Nick Cannon, who now has 11 children and is expecting his 12th sometime next year, according to People.
While many commenters on Instagram agreed with his position and argued that the general public ought to “stay out of rich people’s business”, there were others who mocked the Signal Di Plane artist.
“Elephant man you need to whisper on this subject…..or better yet don’t say word!!! You know nothing about supporting a child,” one woman said, while another commented: “Ele mi love yuh but tappi noise! We have not forgotten the ER episode where you could not recall your kids name or how many you have! Leave farin ppl business!”
Ninjaman and Elephant Man were proudly ranked and praised by Foota Hype in October 2019 as being among Dancehall’s top five womanizers, alongside Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, and Spragga Benz, and were described as “extreme with their “gyallis behavior” and ceremoniously dubbed as “Top Five genna inna gyallis ting”.
However, Spragga Benz who is now happily married fathered just two children, while Beenie Man reportedly has twelve and Bounty Killer, who has long said his children were among his biggest accomplishments, reportedly has seven.
In a July 2019 interview with The Gleaner, Professor Donna P Hope, Professor Hope, who is a lecturer in Culture, Gender, and Society at the University of the West Indies, had explained that where some entertainers are concerned, fathering is seen as a biological activity, and not a social one.
She pointed out that many artists were very young when they started becoming fathers and were “not raised in homes where everything was intact and some who got their breaks and accrued “a lot of money in their late teens” had women “coming at them, so they have a lot of sex and before you know it, babies are born.”
Professor Hope had also noted that there were women who “also extend themselves to be ‘babymothers’ of entertainers, initially content with the joyride until another female takes over.”
“Women are attracted to these superstars and want to get pregnant for them, ‘cause it’s not just about love, but they can get access to resources, especially when they are the primary consort,” she had stated, while adding that fathering multiple children is not limited to dancehall artists, as reggae icon Bob Marley also had several children in and outside his marriage to Rita Marley.
Nevertheless, she had said that some entertainers are deliberate about practising safe sex and family planning as some, while not married have “only have two or three children, because they don’t want a bag of children, so they walk with their condoms.”
“I think we are coming to the end of an era where having a lot of children showed your prowess,” the Dancehall doctor had said.