Merciless ,born Leonard Bartley July 1, 1971 in the Turner district of Chapleton

Chapelton, Jamaica

Chapelton is a market town in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica and the former parish capital.-Name:According to a long time resident:-Amenities:*Clarendon College, secondary school.*Clarendon Hospital, built c1903, now a community Type 3 hospital.*....

, Clarendon, Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, is a ragga

Ragga

-Origins:Ragga originated in Jamaica during the 1980s, at the same time that electronic dance music's popularity was increasing globally. One of the reasons for ragga's swift propagation is that it is generally easier and less expensive to produce than reggae performed on traditional musical...

 and dancehall

Dancehall

Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...

 artist.

Biography

Merciless first found success performing with sound systems. He made his recording début in 1994 with "Lend Out Mi Mercy", which was a hit in Jamaica and elsewhere, and a string of further hits followed, including "Mavis", which was the top reggae single in Jamaica in 1995 and used the same riddim

Riddim

Riddim is the Jamaican Patois pronunciation of the English word "rhythm," but in dancehall/reggae parlance it refers to the instrumental accompaniment to a song. Thus, a dancehall song consists of the riddim plus the "voicing" sung by the deejay. The resulting song structure may be taken for...

 as Shaggy

Shaggy (musician)

Orville Richard Burrell , better known by his stage name Shaggy, is a Jamaican-American reggae singer and rapper. He is perhaps best known for his 1995 single "Boombastic" and 2000 single "It Wasn't Me"...

's "Mr. Boombastic". Like several other dancehall stars, he adopted 'conscious' lyrical content in the late 1990s. He is similar in sound to fellow artist Bounty Killer

Bounty Killer

Bounty Killer is a Grammy nominated Jamaican reggae and dancehall deejay. He is the founder of a dancehall collective known as The Alliance.-Early life and career:...

. In the late 2000s he was imprisoned in Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 for fourteen months.

He is also known by the nickname "Warhead", and engaged in several high-profile on-stage 'battles' in the late 1990s and 2000s with fellow deejays Beenie Man

Beenie Man

Anthony Moses Davis , better known by his stage name Beenie Man, is a Grammy award winning Jamaican reggae artist. He is the self-proclaimed "King of the Dancehall".-Biography:...

, Ninjaman

Ninjaman

Ninjaman, alias Don Gorgon, is a popular dancehall deejay / Actor, known for his controversial and pro-gun lyrics and his stuttering and melodramatic style...

, and Bounty Killer. His rivalry with Bounty Killer did not prevent the two from recording together, with "No One Cares" released in 2000.

Discography

• Mr. Merciless (1994), VP Records
  VP Records
  VP Records is an independent reggae record label, located in Queens, New York. It is best known for producing Caribbean singers.-The foundation:...
  
  
• Len' Out Mi Mercy (1995), Annex
• Mama's Cooking (1997), Greensleeves Records
  Greensleeves Records
  Greensleeves Records & Publishing is a record label specialising in dancehall and reggae music. The company was founded by Chris Cracknell and Chris Sedgwick and started as a small record store in West Ealing, London, in November 1975 and is based in Britain....