Ragga Ragga Ragga 2005!

CAPELTON – Long Time
SIZZLA KALONGI – Spring Break
BOUNTY KILLER – Mad Love
VYBZ KARTEL F. MARLENE – Goodas
MR. EASY & KID FAREIGNA – It’s Your Body
FRANKIE PAUL – Those Girls
KID KURRUPT F. JAYMARIE – Look Out Weekend
MAD COBRA – Rain Check
GABRIEL – Lock Off Anthem
NINJA KID & BAJIE MAN – Adi O
MAKA DIAMOND – Money O
KID FAREIGNA – Good Good Good
BEENIE MAN – U Tight
DYNAMITE MC – ALL NIGHT PARTY
JD (SO SOLID CREW) – What U Want
KANANGA & ZAIRE – How Di Ting Go
BRICK & LACE – Tonight
MARLENE – See It Deh
TORNADO – Printa
JAH’ZAY & SANKE – Pony
BIG FISH – Pancakes
BIGGA BOSS – Bashment Girl
SOUTH RAKKAS CREW – Bionic Riddim

They have Ears on their mixtape.

xxp got to it first... alex have you heard the Bomb a Drop riddim? its bananas.

listen to "On the Beach."

http://www.vprecords.com/onesheet.php?cat_number=VP2287.2

Also could grime artists stop taking dancehall artists names, please I keep getting excited everytime I see Baby Cham's name and then I realize it isn't actually that Baby Cham.

1-Macka Diamond/Mad Cobra Mih Nuh Dun
2-Nina Sky/Cham Turnin Me On
3-Delly Rank/Voicemail/Bogle We Di Time
4-Macka Diamond Mr Teki Back
5-Vybz Too Fucky Fucky
6-Beenie Man Ziggy Zung
7-Macka Diamond/Lexxus And Banz
8-Vybz Dutty Panty
9-Sizzla I'm Wit The Girls
10-Voicemail Do What You Feel Like
11-Vybz/Spragga Correction
12-Mad Cobra Switch
13-Beenie Man Three Laws
14-Capleton Free Up
15-Vybz School Bus
16-Beenie Man Dance to the Chaka
17-Bounty Killer Warlock Walk
18-Busy Signal Wuk Gal

ppl might still find it fabulous anyway, i dunno

(ha why not call it spraggot correction!)

perhaps the work of d-hall's more auteur-like ie lenky, south rakkas, ward 21, has been more hermetic of late, too much so for ppl to build upon? also in that critix will cherrypick these, stick em on their pazz n jop and claim d-hall is in its rudest health and it's all just a synechdoche too far. but then does that even have any bearing here. then again u could just as easily say they only seem so hermetic cos others havent done any work around them. 'the chicken needs egging on'!! / 'egg sez "wot are u chicken??"' / 'it's all about the buc-bucs!' (ok no) = etc etc i am so brilliant zzz

on occasion i half-heartedly blame coolie dance's amelodic legacy (riddims kopa > military, say) which WILL NOT GO AWAY and a variety of uninspired electro-clonkers (krazy gym, klymaxx?? i forget how these even go) but i'm still loath to dismiss n totalize cos the odd derivative thing still grabs me in fresh new ways like chat or fungus riddims, and lately other genres cant do even that with their own inbred formalisms (hello rap)

this prob isnt the ragga x3 2005 i would have curated but it wouldnt make a huge difference generally. 'switch' is the best thing on that by miles.

He's got troubles.

don corleon's jonkandoo — a total pearler of a production including too fucky fucky (on the ragga ragga ragga comp), this is one of the worst versions, too, btw. head for "hey ladies" by tok, "da size" by macka diamond and sean paul's "eye deh ah mi knee" if you want the real juice.

stone love's rose gold — a brilliant fanfare of a rhythm, really loose and swinging with great horn stabs and an almost mariachi quality to it; the macka diamond cut on this, the name of which temorarily escapes me, is especially great.

Ward 21's Irob - i know this crew has a few haters here, or at least people who are less than enthusuastic about them, but i can't see how anyone can think this is anything less than a stone-cold killer. it pretty much takes terror squad's lean back and brutally batters it round the head with a sledgehammer. i'm big on ward 21's own lady musgrave and anthony b's blue mountain peak, but bounty killer's the baddest (a rework of "badder dan dat" on the kashmir rhythm) is a spectacular, almost breakcore monster of a version.

admittely, two of these rhythms definitely fall within the post-coolie dance category and one is heavily hip-hop-influenced but these still all add up to some of the most exciting music of the year and some of the best ragga in about 12 months, as far as i'm concerned.

fassy, i'm curious as to your thoughts on all this as i'm tempted to say that your reaction, and to a certain extent jess's, too, is simply based on the fact that we've all been pretty spoilt over the past three years or so, and now that dancehall has simply and inevitably failed to keep up the *ridiculous* quality of what we all refer to know as the golden age, you're claiming that things are an awful lot more bleak than they actually are.

the other two in scare dem crew were nitty kutchie and boom dandimite, if it's of any interest. all of them have done bits and bobs separately and they've only recently regrouped, as far as i know.

I don't think people hate Ward 21 round here at all (U Know How We Roll was one of the best albums of '03!), but I personally have always been resistant to some of the lazy thinking according to which Ward 21 are somehow the respectable face of dancehall as opposed to merely being fantastic practitioners of the style - ie. people who big up Ward 21 and hate on TOK. It's not simply that I don't agree with that line of thinking - I don't even understand it! Ward 21's stuff strikes me as being as slack, violent, funny, commercial, experimental, eerie, silly and inspired as any other dancehall - where's the radical demarcation?

um... and *your* point is?

i would strongly disagree with this, though. the only similar aspect about them is the group configuration (four guys, same age-ish etc). their respective versions of pretty much any rhythm they're both featured on are absolutely poles apart, especially lately. ward 21 have got darker, more mumbly, gruff and murky in their sound whereas tok are going balls-out pop, even moreso than usual.

incidentally, another great thing about that tok interview was having alex singing tarzan boy by baltimora down the phone when i mentioned "she's a ho" on the trifecta riddim. this just after we had a somewhat stilted conversation about their views on homosexuality—the guy out of baltimora was obviously quite gay, i told him... to no great avail.

ragga X3 2005 really did sound disappointing though. not looking forward to writing about this.

It's may not be coincidental that the relatively darker-feeling reggaeton has blown up so much at the same point in time.

1 LENGTH & STRENGTH - MACKA DIAMOND
2 IT SWEET ME - ELEPHANT MAN
3 NO MAN CURSE - WAYNE MARSHALL
4 A NUH YOUR FAULT - VOICEMAIL
5 GOD BLESS - ASSASSIN
6 IT DRH YAH - DEGREE
7 DON'T WANNA DANCE - TAMI CHIN
8 STICKY - ZUMJAY
9 CREEPING - M'LONIE
10 MICHELLE - DANNY ENGLISH
11 JESUS IS SWEETER - NICKI TUCKER
12 AIN'T SCARED - BLING DAWG
13 EVERTHING IS OK - HAWKEYE
14 CHANGE YOUR WAYS - CHICO
15 LIVING MY LIFE - RED ROSE
16 WANNA BE YOUR MAN - NICKY B
17 RUFF & SWEET - LENKY

No Sean Paul?

(don't overlook the stepz one either - the chorus arguably sounds better, certainly nobler there. altho militaristic sounds a drudge now granted)

when the same chat later emerged on bubble up the promo cds and thus the mp3s had it down as 'legalize it', but the 7 was again to read 'we'll be burning'.

er so basically the bubble up one has never been released, and might be a good bet for an album i guess. altho the only other good s paul of late that springs to mind is him on kopa riddim??

i can't think of any other actual good recent s pauls offhand! it just seemed right when i wrote it, oh well.

i think it was... double barrell riddim? but a b-side there starred a japanese toaster called RANKIN TAXI

Contradictory.

check out the applause riddim version called "temperature"

are you sure about this. i've seen an exponantial amount more negative press than positive re dancehall over the past 12 months and think that could well be playing a part, especially with albums they hope to crossover into the mainstream demographic

Sleepy Dog Riddem Driven. I like everything I've heard on this.