The ‘Major Lazer’ character moves from music to Cartoon Network, recruiting Jamaican deejays to voice the characters.
Grammy winning producers, Diplo and Switch, created a stir last year with their ‘Major Lazor’ character and their first dancehall album Guns Don’t Kill People … Lazers Do.
gun-toting commando
The character, which is used on the artwork of their Major Lazer series, is a fictional Jamaican cartoon gun-toting commando who fights zombies. The Major Lazer character will soon be the latest addition to ‘Adult Swim’ with its own series on the Cartoon Network.
Cartoon Network is the name given to television channels world-wide created by Turner Broadcasting which shows primarily animated programming. Cartoon Network is available across the globe in countries such as Australia, France, Germany, India, Pakistan, among others.
Diplo told THE STAR, “Cartoon Network approached us with the idea, we got a plot written and we should start airing in September. It’s a live-action thing like the music videos we’ve done with him and they liked the attitude and the animation, the way it looked.”
Thus far, the producers and the show have auditioned 40 actors to play the various roles including local deejays such as Leftside, Future Fambo, Bugle, Vegas, Mr Lex, among others.
Diplo added, “the show is gonna be very weird, kinda out there and really funny. A crazy world of 80s vampires and zombies via Jamaica. The show is mainly in English and patois, the accent might be heavy so we might have to use sub-titles.”
When THE STAR spoke to Future Fambo, aka Future Troubles, he explained that he auditioned for the role of the main character – Major Lazer himself three weeks ago. “I was approached to do it, the Major Lazer character you know drinks hard, smoke hard, parties hard, he’s like an outlaw and the character fit Future Fambo,” he said.
The interview was conducted over the telephone and Fambo is confident about his chances. He said, “everything is looking great.”
Fambo recently released a collaboration with Beenie Man called Drinking Rum on the ‘One Day’ rhythm and will soon be releasing Swaggaholic for Stephen McGregor. He is also looking forward to the release of his second album for Seanizzle.
Diplo and Switch have been doing more recording locally with acts such as Busy Signal, Vybz Kartel (who they did the popular Pon Di Floor with), Beenie Man, among others. Diplo says, “we want to build a fan base around the world. The way we marketed the Major Lazer thing was so that it could move beyond the album to every aspect.”
Source: Jamaica Star, June 8, 2010