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      *You thought Jr. Gong’s “Welcome to Jamrock” was bleak? Reggae star Cham’s new single “Ghetto Story” is so explicit in its description of poverty and hopelessness in Jamaica that the government has banned it from the island.

       "At first they were trying to fight it in Jamaica, but now it's the biggest thing," Cham tells Reuters. "The radio started playing it like probably two weeks after they said, 'No, no, no.' The fans were letting them know that it was the biggest song in the street. But that's how it is in Jamaica, they tend to draw a curtain to the real things going on."

       The video for "Ghetto Story" features Cham rhyming into a cell phone as children act out his verses of robbing store clerks and sleeping on foam squares. Shot in one day, the clip caught the attention of MTV, which ran it on "Direct Effect" and "MTV Jams." Cham also recruited Akon for the "Ghetto Story" remix, which recently went to radio. Atlantic will release Cham’s album of the same name in August.      

       Baby Cham, born Dameon Dean Beckett in Kingston, also had government bans slapped on his earlier tracks "Desperate Measure" and "Ghetto Play," as well as Bounty Killer's "Anytime," which Cham wrote with longtime producer buddy Dave Kelly.      

       "The government wrote me," Cham says regarding "Ghetto Play." "I was saying to give me the country to run for a day. And they said, 'We need to stop the bashing of the government.' That's not bashing, it's just showing up the government. There's no free speech there. They say you have free speech, but it's not free speech."