The duo, Leftside and Esco are no more.

Though there was no drama, or as Jamaicans put it, 'passa passa' that caused the split, the fact is they have decided to pursue solo projects.

Matthew 'Esco' Thompson, in likening the split to Destiny Child's decision to explore solo careers, told THE STAR: "There is some truth to it. We don't have any bad feelings or anything like that. Some time in the future we might get back to working on projects together; you can never tell, but for now we are solo."

The duo, consisting of himself and Craig 'Leftside' Parkes have been working together for more than nine years, starting out as young selectors, then trying their hands at producing and finally as artistes. It was then that fans were introduced to their character 'Dr. Evil' and hits such as Tuck Een Yuh Belly, Wine Up Pon Har, Stay Far From We, among others.

Esco says, "It (split) didn't happen on a particular day or anything like that. It's something that we have been talking about for a while and about doing separate albums.

Album deal

From we hit, we decided that was what we wanted to do, then one day Leftside come to me and was saying that he got an album deal. I was fine with it and enthusiastic about it and I even deejayed on a few of the tracks on the album.

Then, after that, is was back to travelling and in no time our album was taking off, so we just worked with it. We have always been interested in working on solo projects and sing different things. It's a risk, but it's something we want to try."

Though the two will no longer be performing together, Esco says they will still be giving fans a touch of their favourite songs when they hit the stage and "you know how it go. The production house is still in tact and we are still producing rhythms - we have some coming out soon. Leftside and Esco will continue in that respect, but people will start to see us as different entities. We won't be together on shows though."

Esco recently completed his first solo project called Showstopper and says, "Right now I'm going over a few things with management and fine-tuning it. We are going to pick from about 35 to about 15 and it's for the most part completed."

"Again, anything can happen in the future. If the two of us blow up on the solo scene, people might not be able to afford both of us on the same show," he laughed. "But if people want to bring something to the table, I'm sure we can work something out," he concluded.

Efforts to contact Leftside for the article were unsuccessful.