Dancehall legend Tiger found safe after 4-day disappearance
Dancehall icon Tiger’s game of hide-and-seek is now over and with a happy ending.
Dancehall artiste Rhialty Check is grateful that her father, legendary icon Tiger, was returned to her safely after he went missing for almost four days earlier this week.
The Come Back to Me deejay was reportedly staying at the home of a Good Samaritan, Leonardo Reynolds, who gave the legend a room to sleep in after Tiger found himself marooned in Greenwich Farm.
READ: Veteran dancehall artiste Tiger reported missing
“I just want to thank Leonardo Reynolds for keeping my father safe by giving him a room at his house to sleep for three days because Greenwich Farm is not really a safe place for a man like him to be,” Rhialty told OBSERVER ONLINE.
“Reynolds is a man who go to work in the mornings and when he saw my father’s plight, he respected my father as a deejay from when he was a little boy so when him see my father stranded in the community, he offered to help. He did the video on TikTok hoping that someone would see him and come for him. I am just so grateful to him right now. Is a real good yute.”
She also thanked the professional officers of the Jamaica Constabulary Force for their timely intervention.
When Rhialty realized where Tiger was located, she contacted Matilda’s Corner, who got in touch with Hunts Bay Police Station. They then contacted Reynolds, who brought Tiger to the station. Rhialty was reunited with her father there.
“I am going to carry him home and clean him up and take care of him. He is not in the greatest of conditions, but I am so happy right now. Him never have to make it out alive, is a dark place him did deh, it never have to end up so good,” she said.
If a cat has nine lives, this Tiger has 90 times nine because in an eventful life, which has lasted 57 years on this planet, he has cheated death, loved and lost countless times, enjoyed the highs of incredible wealth, endured the impotence of crippling poverty, conquered drug addiction, survived betrayals from close friends — and all with his sense of humour intact.
Tiger himself blessed up the OBSERVER ONLINE reporter.
“Bless up! Whap, whap, whap…God go with you,” Tiger joked.
Asked if he was treated well, he responded: “yea man.”
Tiger is a legendary dancehall figure whose powerful performances ignited audiences all over the world. The legend of Tiger grew in the mid-1980s with his bombastic live performances.
He recorded for producers including Harry J, King Jammy, Gussie Clarke, Sly & Robbie, Philip “Fatis” Burrell and Donovan Germain. In 1989, he became one of the first dancehall artistes to cross over into the US hip-hop scene when he did a combination with the Fat Boys on “T’ings Nah Go So”.
Success continued in the 1990s and he was signed by Columbia Records’ short-lived Chaos imprint. His only album for the label was ‘Claws of the Cat’ in 1993. In the early 1990s, he scored big with the hit song, ‘When’.
He had a life-changing accident in 1994.
In 2003, he returned to live performances as part of the Dons of Dancehall UK tour. He also appeared at Reggae Sumfest alongside deejay Kiprich in 2007, as well as the 2010 “Reewind and Come Again” in New York, which included a host of dancehall performers from the 1980s and early 1990s.
– Claude Mills