rolling dancehall & reggae 2016

new Spice, "Born Wid It". Watch this quick, she's usually on top of pulling unauthorized youtubes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toy7cVXweCc

^that whole riddim is a good time: https://soundcloud.com/gazapriince-entertainment/sets/90s-don-dada-riddim-seanizzle-records-2016-gazapriiinceent

Indeed. I find it difficult to get past Busy Signal's version though - it's A LOT of fun.

there is some really great bass on this so far. respect for Dean Fraser feature

ah this song is great. it's almost easy listening.

yeah vintage Fraser tracks on Jammys riddims have kind of a cruiseship quality to them that runs pleasingly against the grain in a rinse of something like the Punany riddim -- this feels like a loving tribute to that exact vibe

new Kranium video for one of the standouts on Rumors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hjt4KNgKC4

there's a ton of good versions on this Cure Pain riddim, not sure which to rec

Jahmiel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v20MG8SNWyA

Mavado:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIt6TJGdTVk

I'm more of a dub fan, what rolling thread is appropriate for posting/consuming it?

i wanna be careful here not to talk out my ass but in reference to the "how is vybz taping in jail": a good friend did a year in jamaica researching the recording history of the country and how the legal system overlaps. She did some work at a jail where they had a functioning recording studio setup and work study programs for inmates to learn how to work the equipment and cut demos. I have no idea if that's par for the course but it does exist.

also: the playlist is up to date with what's available. Back in a month.

Rolling Dancehall and Reggae Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist

Xp to octobeard
There are a few but Dub / Reggae: An Idiot's Guide seems to get bumped most often
Xp to ulysses
That's very interesting! Was yr friends research published?

she's written several academic papers and lectured regarding human rights/music in jamaica; the main focus of her research was jamaica as a case study for a vibrant music scene that functions effectively without copyright and the kaleidoscope of creativity that emerges from that matrix
https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2011/03/mann

whoa thanks for sharing

Yeah excited to check that out

she spins as DJ Ripley; I really enjoy her sets
https://soundcloud.com/ripley

Jahmiel's "Great Man" has some sweet synth flutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISLJSa63PUA

ricky blaze album is tremendously curated imo

otm, it covers so many bases, though I haven't gotten into "Rodeo" yet.
does anyone know why this Gyptian feature isn't on the album on iTunes (at least in Canada)? It's great, of course, and would also push the album over the 30 minute mark:
https://soundcloud.com/fmerecordings/04-operatah-feat-gyptian-1?in=fmerecordings/sets/ricky-blaze-conquer-the-moment-project

reminds me that the best version of Uptown Julie was also never released:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzQo80LlSHE

I love how on "Apart" he closely mics the almost spoken vocals but then puts a ton of space between her and the mic when she belts it out ~2:10. quite possibly a tried and true production trick but super effective here

The Phantom of the Dancehall riddim is nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD5R5JSI4hM

not bad, but feel like that riddim name led to unrealistic expectations on my part

Christopher Martin kills it on Cure Pain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLeh1IWDEC4

I like this sprightly, sparkly Popcaan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11cWOVaaQ8

All Inclusive riddim is a jam: https://soundcloud.com/anarchy_ent1/all-inclusive-riddim-mix-february-2016

the fantastic new Chronixx mixtape is as classicist and satisfying as you'd expect. if hearing him sing over vintage Augustus Pablo riddims appeals to you, download this now.
that said, he gets closer to deejaying at times than he has in the past and apart from all the literal roots revival it has "Sell My Gun" which has me pretty excited for his album later this year

My one problem with the Day Off Riddim is that Dexta Daps kills it so much harder than anybody else, lol. It's unfair!

https://soundcloud.com/british-linkz/dexta-daps-chinese-jordan-february-2016

Still stuck on the lovely Day Off Riddim. Sell My Gun is really good too.

okay so so far this year Day Off, Cure Pain and All Inclusive Riddim are all among my absolute favourites. But they also seem to occupy much of the same sonic space. Any thoughts on how you would rate them individually?

yeah, I agree with that -- in fact I didn't really get into Day Off at first, because I'd just listened to Cure Pain and it felt a bit too similar. Right now I like the moodier vibe of All Inclusive the most, and I think it has the highest number of versions that I like, but I'm listening to Vershon on Day Off right now and it's pretty nice. Also I only really need Mavado on Cure Pain.

Champion Boy now has a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdyKjebTj7s

Keeping Mavado, Vybz, jahmiel and alkaline and maybe one or two more on Cure Pain btw. I really like it but there are just so many tracks I sometimes get a bit lost listening to it.

Also enjoying the kind of basic Love Games Riddim way more than I probably should.

Playlist updated.

ILM's Rolling Dancehall & Reggae Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist

oh yeah, Jahmiel is great on Cure Pain, forgot about that one. still fairly cool on Alkaline for the most part, though I liked his version on All Inclusive iirc

Feel like jahmiel is generally in the zone these days. Think 2016 could be a big year for him.

me too, though I am historically p bad at these kinds of predictions. also why I stopped anticipating crossover hits

I don't believe in crossover hits anymore, lol. I just want the quality to keep coming. There are about ten dancehall artists I rate higher than any American rapper not named Young Thug atm but I'm not expecting the world to notice any of them.

ha, yeah, I'm continually surprised at how a lot of the dancehall-interested writers/tweeters/whatever I check on seem to think that like, e.g., the Work video (or Good Times, Blacker the Berry, etc) is a clear sign that dancehall will be big again in Anglo-America. The Lagos-Joburg-Kingston-Port of Spain axis you mentioned on the afrobeats thread is exciting if pretty nascent imo, and I don't even know if we need to add London or Atlanta or NYC or, shudder, Toronto to it. that said, thinking about taking Work and replacing Drake with Dexta Daps or Burna Boy or etc...

...but that's because Drake sucks not because the others really need to be in an American pop/rnb context

Exactly! Dexta Daps on Work would have been awesome - too good, literally. He would probably have started singing about taking Riri's "maiden" though.

Popcaan - High All Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJDDs4CfEc

^nice

I like the 90s ragga made on a playstation vibe of this Mavado track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kmkESPxzbg

kinda forgot how excited I used to be for Rvssian's productions. this Charly Black never quite takes off like it could, especially with 4 minutes to work with, but trying to capitalize on his new south american fanbase seems like a good move:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XzJm_lQpu8

Indeed. I find it difficult to get past Busy Signal's version though - it's A LOT of fun.
― human and working on getting beer (longneck),

yeah that track is superb. did you check out the Chronixx tape?

also apparently I forgot how much I liked Christopher Martin on Cure Pain upthread too, so just ignore everything I said about that one

i need to get the chronixx mix. i'm on a facebook thread where everyone's freaking out about '16 releases in all genres and there's too damn much music everywhere! good problems.

nice Sly&Robbie/Taxi-era vibes on this Chino & Di Genius song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCysaCgp1ZY

http://www.fuse.tv/2016/03/tropical-house-dancehall-music-essay

Below is earlier January piece quoting Bianca Gracie who wrote the fuse piece re dancehall not getting proper credit -

http://www.spin.com/2016/01/rihanna-tropical-house-dancehall-kygo-charlie-puth-justin-bieber-selena-gomez/

Jamaican music entering the discussion of musical "appropriation" is fraught with so many ironies. I mean I can't tell a Jamaican person to not be annoyed by this, but from my POV jamaican music's conceptual gift to the world boils down to the power and creativity of unhesitatingly appropriating whatever crosses your radar, even when it's forced onto your radar through political and cultural imperialism.

Sure, there's some shitty behavior cited in that piece, and do push back against calling "Sorry" or "Work" tropical house for basic inaccuracy, but to my ears Sorry's primary influence is reggaeton, which (I'm sure everyone reading this knows) is an entire genre appropriated from a handful of dancehall riddims, so this supposed line of clear ancestry is actually pretty tangled...which is one of the things that makes following JA music fun -- shit like hearing "pass me the keys to my Beemer" show up in J Hus and afrobeats tracks. The thing to be annoyed about re: dancehall is widespread ignorance of riddim culture; to complain about dancehall being a meme is totally bizarre. During the Grammys when Pitbull performed El Taxi there were all these people straightfacedly tweeting about Pitbull "ripping off" Murder She Wrote, which is so lol since there's a reason that MSW is on something called the Bam Bam riddim not the Jessica Fletcher riddim. Or over in the ANTI thread where people were earnestly discussing how bad+weird it was to voice a Tame Impala riddim like they never heard Hell Is Round the Corner or etc...

There's something just so boring and essentialist about the way this stuff gets discussed, and, while lecturing Jamaicans about their own culture is a bad look, imo attacking appropriation goes against one of reggae's enduring strengths. This Sleng Teng theory is so interesting to me: https://axischemicals.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/david-bowie-digital-reggae-kingpin/. If true, then literally thousands of dancehall songs -- one of the unquestionably foundational riddims of the last 30 years of JA music -- are appropriated from a single Bowie song, an act of collective genius like jungle and the Amen break that should be hailed as an example. Basically, I wish dancehall was being brought up in these discussions as much for how it can serve as a force of creative appropriation counteracting people's apparently deathless commitment to a dubious/boring ideal of "originality" as it's being talked about as a currently overlooked culture that's being unfairly co-opted, as much truth as there may be to some of those claims.

Word.

lol thanks longneck

Ha ha, I'm writing this on my phone (from a sofa in Cape Town) so no longish essays from me atm but yeah, I pretty much agree w all of that, even to the extent that I find most thinkpieces abt evil white artists appropriating minority art extremely tiresome. Steal/jack/borrow whatever you can. Art might follow.

yeah I generally believe Internet social justice discourse has been a force for good, but "appropriation" (as distinct from actions that can be attacked as racism or exploitation) is so under-thought.

anyway, I should have just posted this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwOHjHUvrh8

yeah, great post there

yeah same, though I'm pretty sure we've noted the same thing for the past several years in a row.

tbf I can't think of any 2016 dancehall albums that belong on anyone's list (afropop on the other hand...). It is a bit sad but predictable seeing stuff like the Equiknoxx and Jubilee albums, or like Fact has Devin di Dakta's "Bubble" on their "club" tracks list but no dancehall actually produced in JA. In terms of reggae, I thought Chronixx was supposed to put out a full-length this year but nothing materialized, and in general the 'roots revival' was much quieter than years past. I haven't seen many tracks lists but I expect they'll mostly bear out Sparks' narrative. The Fader might be an exception if they're not too distracted writing explainers about white supremacy

I just delivered a 2016 albums list with Kartel placing fourth, but I realize other people have terrible taste, so... Anyway I''m getting used to this. The genres I'm into are the ones no one else find interesting. But I did get to review Babes Wodumo
And Heavy-K today in a weekly, and am working on a big Kartel piece for February, so I'm not really complaining.
I would be interested in reading something on the best 2016 riddims soon, though. Guessing Moskato will come out on top most places.

yeah I almost said "maybe with Kartel's album as an exception" but tbh I've never listened to the thing as an album, just heard most if it over time as individual tracks (see also Alkaline's New Level Unlocked). Also for several different reasons I don't realistically expect any US or UK publication to include the new Kartel on a list with like Radiohead...so yeah it's no longer even disappointing really. That said, I would love to see a soca list just to see what I've missed.

longneck, you should link that Kartel piece here when it's out

iirc Large Up usually does a riddims list. I would expect Moskato as well as Cure Pain for sure. Maybe Wicked Wicked too?

Sure, and All Inclusive Riddim. I really like Tropical Punch as well - especially the I-Octane. Those, along with the 47th Floor, Club Life, Car Crash, Crown Love, Day Off, Feel Good, House of Joy, Loodi, Ova Dweet, Red Plate, Skelewu, The Champ, The Terminal, Wet Dreams, Yardman and Zen riddims are the ones I end up sticking with. 90s Don Dada was fun for a while but I hardly play it anymore.

The Soca system of starting the year in september and basically closing it out in february is throwing me for a loop, btw. I can't for the life of me remember which Soca Season 2016 tunes were actually 2016. And I'm just starting to get into the 2017 batch.

Oh, and Success Riddim.

I liked the recent album by Equiknoxx so much, I felt like it needs its own thread: EQUIKNOXX - Bird Sound Power (2016) - exquisite avant-dancehall riddims

Seriously, go check it out now now now

(since they got mentioned again I should clarify that Equiknoxx are in fact Jamaican)

Every time I've tried to listen to this I end up getting annoyed that there aren't any vocalists. I actually quite liked their mix for Fact though, do seek that out. I might post some of their vocal productions on the other thread later as I do agree that they're very talented. Just not sure why they wanted to do a riddim-only album, though perhaps the fact it's on Demdike Stare's label is the answer?

For some reason Pitchfork has put out a video for Chronixx's "Majesty"; it's nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OEaMaO9NfM

and Merry Christmas thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siluvHUzy2k

oof:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJz43Hrsow

LargeUp's list is out:

1. Vybz Kartel, “Fever”
2. Rihanna feat. Drake, “Work”
3. Konshens, “Bruk Off”
4. Popcaan, “We Still A Win (World Cup)”
5. Alkaline, “City”
6. Drake feat. Popcaan, “Controlla”
7. Jahmiel, “Where Were U”
8. Popcaan, “Ova Dweet”
9. Vybz Kartel, “Western Union”
10. Mavado, “Progress”
11. Charly Blacks, “Gyal You A Party Animal”
12. Dwayne “DJ” Bravo, “Champion”
13. Chi Ching Ching, “Breadfruit (Roast or Fry)”/ Popcaan, “Wicked Man Ting”
14. Spice, “Indicator”
15. Chronixx, “Sell My Gun”
16. Alkaline, “After All”

Plus a bunch of honorable mentions: http://www.largeup.com/2016/12/15/best-dancehall-singles-of-2016/18/

Two mentions of Drake is pretty rmde but this is a really strong list imo. New-to-me DJ Bravo has 33million views on yt

how did I forget how great "Gal.gov" is. are there really no other versions on this riddim?

Well... both of those Drake tracks are pretty undeniable, whatever you might think of Drake. I had simply filed the DJ Bravo track as "yet another Culu Culu track" though. Will have to listen more carefully. And Progress... is not my favorite Mavado track this year. It just sounds old fashioned in the wrong way to me. I much prefer him on the All Inclusive riddim or on Beat & Teach and maybe one or two others. But yeah. Solid list. Curious about their riddims countdown.

Yeah fair enough, I don't really get the fuss about "Controlla" with or without Popcaan, but "Work" was my favorite track to hear all over the city this summer and it def would be odd to not include it. Something like "Luv" would have been a lot less forgivable.

Right. Controlla set a trend... and it works on most dancefloors, still. So I'd say it belongs. I'll have to think a bit tomorrow about what they're leaving out here.

Some thoughts:
1) Why is Popcaan's We Still Ah Win so high on the largeup list? It's one of the Popcaan tracks I've played the least this year.
2) My pick for Alkaline track of the year is probably After All, above One More Time. City is good, but I prefer most of his other singles. Weirdest of all is that the part on Block & Delete on the intro where he goes "instant block and deleeeeeeeete" isn't utilized as a hook. It's easily the most catchy moment of the song, imo.
3) Did Dexta Daps kinda blow it this year, just by not releasing enough stuff, or will we see Haunted or one of his other tracks catch on in 2017? I know I played Shabba Madda Pot weekly at least until october.

afaict Largeup's general rubric for these lists is to take popularity/status as a "single" somewhat into account. Hence "Progress" being on there instead of a stronger Mavado song. Or the one from the Trini cricketer for that matter.

1) I like this tune but yeah it's too high, and I much prefer Nah Idle, maybe even more than Ova Dweet. World Cup did pop up on a bunch of mixes I heard around the Olympics, which could be a factor.
2) I seem to be alone on the board in thinking City is a consummate summer jam--love him in this breezily confident mode--and as much as I love One More Time I think this would be my pick too. Hearing this was the first time I was *really* struck by Alka's now-obvious pop star qualities. That said, After All, 12pm, and My Side of the Story have all been creeping up for me lately though. Formula could be here too. Hell I threw on New Level Unlocked yesterday and enjoyed it back to front.
3) They mentioned in the intro that Shabba Madda Pot was huge this year, but they'd included it on last year's list so it didn't fit through the Charly Blacks loophole. Haunted came out in early January iirc, so that seems like kind of a long shot to me. I feel like it's pretty common for dancehall artists to follow up a hot streak with total silence--I remember once being worried that Popcaan had blown it after the initial wave of Only Man and Ravin. Or like the other day I was fretting about Chronixx and then the next day he dropped a new video and announced a huge tour and an album release for 2017.

Trigger Finger would work too, lol. Or even Chinese Jordans. Honestly though, none of them are as good as Shabba Madda Pot or 7 Eleven. That's what I meant by stating that he kinda blew it. Still, when I listened through the new Road Block Riddim the other day and Dexta's version came on, my first thought was literally «how the heck didn't this guy rule 2016?» My best guess would be that he just didn't release enough music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faSYRFcut1E

Uhhhh... Road Show Riddim, obviously.

I think he'll be okay. Ignoring release dates, he basically had a major hit in 2015 and followed it up with a big hit in 2016. Maybe he would have risen even further if the video for Chinese Jordan wasn't so terrible.

Genuinely surprised that Fact picked "Ova Dweet" as their track of the year. I'm not sure I totally buy their narrative of the song encapsulating the year of pop-dancehall symbiosis, and I think the Red Bull Culture Clash/Mixpak figures too large in their assessment, but respect for actually putting some weight behind the idea of dancehall being important this year. I lolled at the Fader spending a couple paragraphs bemoaning Popcaan's like 90 seconds of material being cut from Controla and then not putting any of his actual tracks on their 115-item list (c.f., pitchfork letting andy beta say afrobeats was the sound of the year in their Alicia Keys writeup and then putting zero actual african songs on their list).

Well at least Ova Dweet is *that* good imo. I've played it since it dropped and it always brings good energy in whatever context. It's easily the 2016 popcaan song I'd play first to a non-dancehall-knowledgeable friend, and I'd be happy to put it on a top 20 songs of the year list. So... nice move by Fact. However, the whole Culture Clash thing barely registered with me - as I watched some highlights via youtube that didn't translate too well. I guess you had to be there. And yeah, spot on about Fader and Pitchfork.

tbc Ova Dweet is one of my favorite songs of the year. I just wasn't remotely expecting Fact of all places to make it number one! not that I read it all that often

Somehow, Largeup managed to leave All Inclusive out of their riddims of the year round up. [Trump] Weak! [/Trump]
http://www.largeup.com/2016/12/22/biggest-dancehall-riddims-2016/

rolling dancehall & reggae 2017

Playlist is finalized for the year.

ILM's Rolling Dancehall & Reggae Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist