There is a document circulating in the entertainment community that Virgin Records, the internationally known British recording label, has dropped Beenie Man from its roster of acts.

However, when Beenie Man was contacted, he laughed off the claims that he had been dropped.

“Virgin no exist again, it have a merger with a next company, so right now, mi a look fi balance back my career. My contract with them is up this year – well, at least from the year start, it up --- and I wasn’t going to sign back with them,” Beenie Man told One876Entertainment.com.

The merger that Beenie Man is referring to is that Virgin, originally founded in 1972 by Richard Branson and Nik Powell, being sold first to Thorn EMI, and then merged with Capitol Records last year to create Capitol Music Group.

This latest development has come in the wake of reports that Beenie’s last album, Undisputed racked up anaemic sales.

In the changing recording universe where major companies are in the process of changing from physical distribution to digital distribution, a lot of acts are being affected. The Capital/Virgin merger has led to at least eight other acts losing their recording contracts.

“I wasn’t going to sign back with them anyway. Mafia House is going to put out my next album,” Beenie said confidently.

So this mark’s the end of Beenie’s association with Virgin which began in 2000. The deejay’s previous albums fared much better than his latest effort. 2002's Tropical Storm, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Reggae Albums chart and No. 7 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums tally, spawned the hit Feel It Boy featuring Janet Jackson, and moved 272,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Art And Life, widely considered a commercial disappointment for executives at Virgin Records, did not move mega units even after Beenie Man teamed up with Arturo Sandoval and Wyclef Jean of The Fugees (on Love Me Now). It sold 386,000 copies in the United States, again according to sales tracker SoundScan.

Remember that Beenie Man broke through in the US market in 1998 with the Many Moods Of Moses set for VP Records which contained the hit dance song, Who Am I, which had a strong run on the Billboard Rap chart and leading urban radio stations like Hot 97 in New York City. That album and song actually gave Virgin administrators the impetus to sign him in 2000.

Beenie’s biggest break came in early 2004 with the release of a remix of Dude featuring the crisp vocals from Ms. Thing and rhymes by Shawnna.