Elephant Man denies disrespecting cameraman at Yush

Elephant Man says the allegation that he disrespected an older man and a cameraman during his performance at Dream Weekend’s YUSH event is the furthest thing from the truth.

The Pretty Baby artiste has recently faced backlash on social media after a video clip showing him pushing an older man off stage and appearing to mistreat a cameraman circulated online. However, Elephant Man told THE STAR that the video was cut short, and did not reflect the full story of what took place, and was mischievously captioned to embarrass him.

“I frighten when I see everything blow out of context. Somebody take the video and caption it ‘Elephant disrespect cameraman’ but what happened was the guy that you see, that’s Fiah. If you know Fiah, you know that he’s been travelling all over the world with me for at least 25, 30 years. So Fiah is my friend and part of my team; a him have me Signal D Plane stick, so this is something that me and him planned. If you watch the full video, when I push him off, he came back on the stage again, and I wet him up, and he wet me up back. He has my bag with my merino, my towel, everything.”

Regarding the interaction with the cameraman, Elephant Man emphasised that what unfolded on stage was part of the performance and was never intended to be seen as disrespect towards someone who was simply doing his job.

“I was on stage performing, and I was running some joke with the cameraman. So I touch the cameraman on his shoulder and say, ‘Move, move’, and him get up, and him go stand up where the DJ is selecting and him gwan video. I was running joke with him, saying that, ‘Yow, you broke, you can’t sue me’ and whatever. Maybe how I said it came off too strong, but me stop the show and apologise to him and say, ‘Cameraman, me apologise to you, you know. A joke me I run, but we nuh want nobody take it out of context and feel like me disrespect [you]’. It’s just entertainment so I don’t mean nothing. I would never disrespect you like that.’ And the cameraman say, ‘Yeah’. He was standing right [there] and continue video the show ‘til it was finished. I apologise to the cameraman then, and I apologise to him now again. It was just performance, and we were just entertaining the people.”

Elephant Man later supplied video evidence of himself apologising to the cameraman if any offence was taken, plus another clip with him and Fiah on stage with what looked like glow sticks, playing around.