Dancehall: tell me stuff...

"Moses Cry" by Beenie Man is utterly amazing, if anyone hasn't heard it yet. So search that (it's on the 2000 disc).

Unfortunately I have nothing really beyond that, and I was planning to make an impassioned plea on Skykicking for further suggestions.

Of course if you step down a level in purity, there's always excellent 2-step/dancehall hybrids like M-Dubs' "Bump 'n' Grind", B-15 Project's "Freak Break", Sticky's "Booo!", Richie Dan's "Call It Fate", Yardcure Cru's "Life That We Livin" etc. Also, Foxy Brown's _Broken Silence_ seems to have a really strong dancehall flavour, and from what I've heard also seems to be better than I would ever have expected (on the fantastic Neptunes-joint "Gangsta Boogie" she steals Elephant Man's tricks - "ya da da da da: it's the muthafuckin' B-R-O-W-N!" - and both brilliance and hilarity ensue.

Good luck.

Teddy

I've been wondering lately about, I don't know, the crossover point between roots stuff and dancehall. Basically I love dancehall, and I feel like by now I've listened to a lot of dub/roots/etc., and my question is this: was there a point where clave-based dancehall rhythms came into the music when it was still all live musicians, or did that not arrive until digital dancehall?

I guess new technology = new beats makes sense, and I haven't really heard any oldish-sounding recordings of reggae bands playing rhythms that I think of as dancehall (maybe ONE song I heard on the radio once, but I have no idea what/when it was).

Wayne Smith's "Under Mi Sleng Teng" is considered the first digital dancehall reggae effort, not that that fully answers the question.

what is "clave-based"? you mean the ragga beat?

there was digital stuff before sleng teng but that was the first monster digital hit. also it wasn't a digital update of an older rhythm. so yeah technology brought about ragga for the most part

Yeah, I'm guessing we're talking about the same beat. Uh, dotted 8th note, dotted 8th note, 8th note, repeat? :>

wat

boom, boom, boom boom, boom, boom boom, boom, etc.?

or i guess boom, boom, clack boom, boom, clack boom, boom, clack

Sleng Teng doesn't use that rhythm, I think it came into prominence later (though I know next to nothing about dancehall/ragga)

yeah i think that started with digital and then carried over into the live music so deejays will have now back-up bands doing electronic rhythms at live shows, stopping and starting over for rewinds, etc.

there's mixes of sleng teng where they cut out the mixer in time to that "boom boom clack" rhythm with a pause in place of the clack (beginning of john wayne "call the police")