Mr. Vegas Upsets Voicemail and Ova Marz

Reggae/dancehall artiste Mr Vegas has ceased promotion of his dance single 'Hot Rice' which features popular dancer, Ova Marz. According to Mr Vegas, dancehall duo Voicemail has already released a version of 'Hot Rice', and it wouldn't be fair to release his version after the fact.

Following Mr Vegas' decision to end promotion of the single, he has also recorded another version of the song called Give Thanks For Life, without the vocals of Ova Marz.

"Ova Marz and I did the original Hot Rice song together on a rhythm for Arif Copper called Success & Strive. After that, I found out that he had recorded other Hot Rice songs with other artistes including Voicemail. As a matter of fact, he and Voicemail also did a video for their song and started to promote it. It cost a lot of money to shoot a video and promote a song, and since Voicemail had already began promoting their Hot Rice song and video, I decided to scrap my song with Ova Mars and allow them to do their thing." Mr Vegas said.

When contacted, Kevyn V of Voicemail said that Mr Vegas' action was petty.

"It's a dance and if you want to sing a song about dancing, it does not matter. We and Ding Dong did a song for Shampoo dance move and he also did his own song for Shampoo. To me, what Mr Vegas did is petty. A million people sing songs about gyal, gun, bad mind among other things. So are you going to avoid those topics as well? This strange to mi," he laughed.

Kevyn V also believes Mr Vegas should have allowed the fans to decide which version of the song they wanted to hear.

"Vegas is Vegas and Voicemail is Voicemail. I appreciate that he thinks he is looking out for us, but what if his song should become a hit, is he not going to perform it? When he did Tek Wey Yu Self another version was done by Ova Marz, so what is the difference now? I really have to laugh about this," 

Ova Marz was seemingly disappointed with Mr Vegas' action.

"It's all about unity, love and sharing that joy. When a dance is hot, you have more than one song. I never know that all of a sudden you have unlimited amount of songs that an artiste can do. When a dance is hot, Ele do a song, Voicemail do a song, and Mr Vegas does a song.

"It was always about fun and all the songs rotate. These artistes are people that I have worked with already and they know my talent, so I can't stop artistes from doing songs to my dances ... . I just think this is not something that's good for the business and us as co-workers in the music industry ... I am on my Europe tour and when I was told about this action, I felt very hurt inside because I am all about love and unity," he said, seemingly upset.

Ova Marz has collaborted with both Mr Vegas and Voicemail in the past.