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A new video from Demarco posted yesterday for his “Love a Come Down” track and it’s all tied up with sexing and old dude super heroes and cats in trees… oh and secretaries that shake their ass. Need I say more?
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Even as Mavado prefaces in the opening of this song, “Stephen, this one is not evil, dis one is to uplift di people” it’s kinda hard to see the “uplifting” qualities when life in the Gully is compared to the Valley of Death. Still, I like this cut because it carries more of that “Di Genius” magic that’s being spread all over the Caribbean. Look how this youngin even gets Mavado on the sensitive tip. Also, WHEN IS SOMEONE GONNA DO A SPREAD ON BIG SHIP? That wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, hehemm. You can get “Can’t Take Wi Life” here.
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Vybz Kartel has been crowding my dashboard as of late, putting out a new something or other every two seconds– I swear, when does this guy have time to bone all those “Gaza for life” chicks?
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Ok, so Serani has dropped something new every week for the last four weeks so it’s about time that I pay him a little mind because I love this dude and I’ve been waiting for his album to come out for a year (even thou i have all them shits memorized) but he just keeps producing because that’s what dude does. He’s like The Dream of the dancehall world.
Let’s start with “Be With You” which came out around the end of August and hasn’t really made it into circulation yet but this is one of my personal favorites, maybe because it’s all about feelings and talking it out with your girlfriend and all the good ingredients for a sweet Rn’B mixup. The next song, “Hustler,” is over the Daseca produced Coke Zero riddim– Serani is the new face for Coke Zero Jamaica along with Chino– a mixtape that dropped about two weeks ago also featuring Mr. Vegas, Chino, Voicemail and you can get it here. It’s five minutes of dancehall on a Coke (zero) high.
Lastly, I added a video just for kicks of dancer Silly Jim doing the steps for Serani & Ding Dong’s new “Skip To My Lu,”– a hit on heavy rotation last week while i was out stumbling around at Fiction and Pure. I’m never quite coordinated enough in three inches heels and a few Rums to pull a new dance step off but… nah I’m gonna pass on this one too.
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First off let me say that I have been a little AWOL due to a mysterious contraction of H1N1 (aka swine flu.) Not to worry, my very nice Jamaican doc was not timid about zapping the crap out of it with some serious horse-pill sized antibiotics. So, I’m back on top now and I thought I’d share the new Beenie “Gimme Gimme Gimme” video that dropped earlier this week while I was holed up in my lil cave.
Let me first start by saying that advertising in Jamaica is a little unconventional for music. For example, Hope Road lies at the end of my street and is a major vein for traffic running from uptown to Halfway Tree (the main bus depot) and on an unfinished concrete wall running the length of the U.S Embassy there is a neatly spray-painted advertisement for “Striker’s Disco” and a phone number in black bold print and then five feet away from that a rushed “Beenie Man” tag. Obviously the Beenie Man tag is a territorial mark in the ongoing feud between Gully and Gaza dancehall tribes but this is how shit gets advertised: a “Beenie” tag on a wall then crossed out a few days later and marked with “Gaza” and then marked out again with “Beenie” and it goes on and on. Point being that people like Vybz, Mavado, Bennie, are never out of the periphery because they’re on every street corner.
This particular Beenie song is making a dent on the air waves as of late and with much thanks to Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor who has been producing all over the dancehall scene this year and was a particularly helpful contributor to Laden and his hit “Bad Boys.” Beenie Man’s video for “Gimme Gimme Gimme” features a lot of “wine” and spandex which is also something you see on every street corner in JA.
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The other night I asked my friend why all the Dancehall songs on the radio are about pickney, money and mama’s (except Kartel’s “Come Breed Mi” which plays about every ten minutes) and he said that Dancehall songs have had to switch route since the Jamaican broadcasting system banned explicit lyrics and “daggering” songs from the radio about six months. This doesn’t mean that you don’t get your fair helping of raunch, especially in clubs and at shows like Street Vybz, which I attended Friday night to see T’ Nez. A surprise performance by Vybz Kartel was enthusiastically welcomed, as well as Black Rhyno, Gaza Indu, Aidonia and heap load of others who bombarded the stage and mashed up the scene by arguing with the DJ’s about which track to play. The show was a scrambling mess– at one point the host told everyone to “Get the fuck off the stage!” if not performing– but catching Aidonia lightened the mood since I’ve been hooked on his “Whine ‘n Bubble” and “Nowadays Girl” since early summer. A new Aidonia song just popped up on the Youtube radar today, where most new riddim hits lurk after being burned onto discs for street sale, and the riddim is Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” beat!!! You can guess what he’s talking about, I know what he’s talking about, such a shame.
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Whenever I’m in a car with friends driving around Kingston, they blast the radio. I’m talking mind-blowing eardrum shaking blasts from the store to the mall to friend’s houses or clubs, the driving is almost always fast and the radio loud. If you like Dancehall then you’re in business because you’re basically listening to everything that’s good or new that’s happening in Jamaican music.
While driving back from Linstead the other day (somewhere between Ochi Rios and Kingston) my friend’s roommate’s song came on the radio, Tristen aka T’Nez. When I met Tristen, he was like, “Hey you should hear my shit,” and I was thinking, Ok here is this twenty-one year old college student, how could this be any good. I stand corrected because when his shit got on the radio I wasn’t hating it at all and it made the drive all that much faster and the stereo all that much louder.
These are the last of the images I took on my lil Holga while traveling cross country in a Rav4 with my cat and my mother. I can’t tell if the images are particularly sandy because it was 108 degrees outside when I was taking these and film got fried or if the sun just washed everything out. Either way, I kinda like that they look so old and grainy.
Kiss My Teeth 