Patra, Tessanne Chin, And More React to Tina Turner’s Death
The Jamaican music fraternity is among those worldwide mourning the loss of legendary rock’n’roll star Tina Turner.
The What’s Love Got To Do With It? singer died on Wednesday at age 83 in Switzerland, the place she’d called home since relocating from the United States in 1995.
According to reports, the performance virtuoso had been battling a longstanding illness. She was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and underwent a kidney transplant in 2017.
A vocal wonder in her own right, Tessanne Chin took to Instagram to hail Turner as an inspiration.
“Today is a sad day,” she wrote in her Story. “I’m lost for words!!! Farewell to one of my ultimate heroes!!! All my love and respect #Queen #TinaTurner #Legend.”
In another comment on Turner’s Instagram page, Chin wrote, “What a woman and what an incredible gift and life!!! All my love and respect to you now and always mam. There is only one TINA.”
For dancehall artist Patra, Turner embodied what it meant to be alluring and a class act altogether.
“When I was a little girl, the only female artist at the time I listened to was this beautiful woman right here,” she wrote in a tribute post. “She taught me how to be confident, sexy, without showing too much. Pure talent! #Icon #Tina thank you! #RIP.”
In a statement issued to the press, Entertainment Minister Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange credited Turner as a singer, dancer, actress and author, adding, “The world has lost one of the great and enduring entertainers who was a woman of tremendous resilience.”
Grange hailed her perseverance and skill beyond rising to the top as Queen of rock’n’roll, but also emancipating herself from the abuse of her ex-husband and former bandmate Ike Turner.
“And how can I not mention her legs which perhaps were as famous as her music?” Grange asked before ribboning her legacy as one that will forever inspire females.
“Tina Turner will go down in history as a woman who refused to be overcome by abuse, one who rose to the top despite the odds, and as one who was an example for women and girls throughout the world that nothing can stop those with determination and a winning attitude.”
Also leaving sentimental remarks were artist Macka Diamond and ZJ Sparks.
Born Anna Mae Bullock, Turner was given her moniker by Ike with whom she made her music debut in 1960 through the single A Fool in Love. They’d ride the wave of tumultuous success for two decades before she went solo in the 1970s.
With more than 100 million records sold worldwide, Turner is one of the best-selling artists of all time, adorned with 12 Grammys, three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Her life and legacy are chronicled in three memoirs, a biopic, a jukebox musical and a documentary.
She is survived by her second husband, German music exec Erwin Bach, and two of Ike’s sons, whom she had adopted.
Her only biological child, Craig Turner, died in 2018.