Mojo Morgan Annoyed By Dancehall’s ‘Bun Off’ Culture

Reggae musician Mojo Morgan is making his voice heard on what he considers as annoying in dancehall music—the culture of ‘y’ and ‘bun off.’

Morgan, who is a member of the renowned Morgan Heritage group, was speaking recently on the The Fix podcast when he revealed that he lived with dancehall star Popcaan and other members of his Unruly Camp in the Jamaican parish of  St. Thomas for five days and had to endure slangs like ‘bun off’ and ‘y’ during his stay which he had difficulty adapting too.

“When you see us on social media I am genuinely annoyed. I’m on the phone and I’m hearing buzzzz, one of his soldiers around the corner a bun me off because mi say mi a come back a town and I said listen to me, you gotta understand something, I’m from Brooklyn ni–a and I’m not going to conform to none a your nonsense and the way you talk so you’re going to have to get used to me. I love you, you’re my brother for life, I know you went to school with my little brother and  get that word, sound have power but if I wanna eat some food, I wanna eat some food, bun off!,” Morgan shared.

“Consume seems a little bit much. I’m going to consume some ital stew, it sounds like I’m going to do a lot. I’m just going to eat some food. You go bun off and go somewhere with that, I’m sorry. You got to reprogramme the way you think and as a grown ass man I’m like bro, it’s not going to happen…it’s hilarious,” he added.

Speaking with DancehallMag, Mojo said the intereractions are hilarious but he realizes that it is prevalent in the dancehall space and shows no signs of being eliminated anytime soon.

“All I can do is laugh when I receive a Y or bun off when speaking to our dancehall artists. As it doesn’t affect me one way or the next. It’s just annoying when interrupted in the middle of a substantial conversation with your peers,” he reasoned.

“Having fun within the culture of dancehall isn’t new and is very important for that jovial spirit to remain present. Now as a Rastaman, we grew up understanding word sound having power. However, I think there has been an injection of phobia into the ancient Rastaman’s way of speaking or not speaking certain things into existence,” he added.

Notwithstanding the prevalence of the language among peers, he said he does not think its usage will have an adverse effect on the music itself.

“I do not think the Y or bun off culture has any effect on the trajectory of dancehall music globally because that mostly takes place during personal conversations and not during the presentation of the music publicly. So no worries there.   ⁠Creative expression should never be frowned upon or censored. As an industry we have enough historical data to prove that the light hearted songs tend to become bigger global hits versus songs that reflect the life in the inner cities which we are from as ghetto youths,” he said.