It's two hours after the agreed meeting time and O'Neil Bryan is not yet at the Q45 Studio; nobody knows exactly where to find him. Who would have thought an 'elephant' could be this elusive!

Elephant... we wanted to keep the dancehall vibe but we're trying to please a lot of the other markets

The phone rings.

Bryan's alter ego Elephant Man (Ele) is having hair woes, and asks Splash to repair to his Hillcrest Avenue pad, where we find him playing 'keep up' with a chubby kid neighbour. The attire is boxer-briefs, canvas loafers and oh, wild-looking red and orange hair.

Our presence seemingly fazes him little and he continues to juggle the football as he speaks of his career and his latest project Let's Get Physical - his first album on P Diddy's Bad Boy label slated for an April 13 release.

He's been off the local charts for a while and the release date has been pushed back three times too many, so it's as good a time as any to ask dancehall's court jester to explain it all.
"You can't allow yuhself fi get burn out," he quips in respect to his all-too-long hiatus, "and I was busy, really busy with the album."

By "busy", he means spending weeks in New York's mixing labs alongside Diddy and a host of other artistes, "trying to bang out the right sound".

"The right sound," he says comes from the impressive producing line- up which, of course, includes Diddy, Swizz Beatz, Baby G and Wyclef Jean, to name a few.

"This album to me is going to be one of my best," Ele says, reclining on a red BMW coupe parked beside his house. "We did exclusive recordings with man like Young Jock, Assassin, Shaggy and Chris Brown; and we got the ladies dem too like Rihanna, Mya and Kat DeLuna."

He shares the rationale for the star-studded collabos: "We wanted to keep the dancehall vibe but we're trying to please a lot of the other markets, so we give everybody a lickle ting."
Ele shares, too, that, the decision to name his album Let's Get Physical not only stems from the title track which sees DeLuna sampling the Olivia Newton John classic, but because it's one that suits various moods.

"Yow, we have song fi you and yuh girl, let's make love get physical. Up inna de club joints, you an' yuh fren dem a dance, physical; you an' some breddren out fi jump off, a physical ting."

Still, he outlines that the album has intrinsic dancehall odes like the Dutty Fridayz staples Drop Dead and Gully Creeper.
The 300-pound women waiting to be lifted, the 'Darth Vader' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean' outfits might be missing, but Ele is just as entertaining as he would be onstage.

He relates how his energy caught Diddy's attention, which resulted in halting production of his Over The Wall album - reworked and renamed to become his latest.

Unlike the hardball impresario Diddy portrays to his all-female and all-male groups (respectively) Dainty Kane and Day26 on his MTV reality series Making The Band, Elephant Man says, to him, he's nothing like that.

"Him just flex 'round we, 'cause him know Jamaicans no 'frighten'. Him professional man, if him no like a song, him a go mek you know. Him never show me no bad vibes yet." Ironically, rumours of an Ele vs Diddy 'beatdown' surfaced around November, the initial release month of Physical.

"Nutt'n no go so," says a slightly irate Elephant Man, "after me an no coke head or out a me mind fi know seh di man sign me an' me go dis him dem way deh."

No love lost, Ele shares that his latest single Five-O featuring Wyclef Jean has hit the airwaves, after that Feel The Steam featuring of-the-moment R&B obsession Chris Brown - the two performed the track two weekends ago at the Smile Jamaica Africa Unite concert.

"Puffy want drop me an Chris Brown inna summer because it a seh 'can you feel the steam' and yuh done know summer ago hot an' a that de lickle girls them want hear. Him (Diddy) know how fi market yuh ting."

But clearly Diddy is better at marketing than he is about expediting paperwork.

"The reason the album take so long a jus' because we couldn't move until we get clearance (from the various artistes management companies) to use the song dem. Because we no want a song out a road a play an' a man a sue we because we no go 'bout it the right and proper way!"

Hold-up, he says was unexpected.

Slated to perform on next weekend's GraceKennedy Issa Boys & Girls Championships fete Finish Line ahead of an intense touring schedule in North America, Elephant is confident the album will do well.

"You done know seh we bring the vibes all the time, 'cause we physical from long time!"

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