RhoDeo 1203 Roots

Hello, we're still on that island with a huge place in the global music catalogue, Jamaica. A production hothouse and they say the Weed makes you slow and lazy-go figure. Without the ganja driven reggae music Jamaica would have remained a Caribbean backwater and dare i say would never have given us Bolt, the fastest man in the world.

Oops bit later posting been watching the Golden Globes, amazingly predictable this year and i'm hardly a big follower of the moving images industry, must be a bit psychic then or according to Sheldrake..picked up the results from the human consciousness field as i 'd been watching yesterdays recording.

To the matters at hand ..some great Dancehall stars

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Frankie Paul is often referred to as Jamaica's Stevie Wonder, and not just because of his visual impairment; like Wonder, he was a talented multi-instrumentalist with a tremendous vocal range. He was also extraordinarily prolific; part of the first wave of dancehall artists, he started his recording career in earnest during the early '80s, and has since flooded the market with product, releasing countless singles and well over 30 albums. That's made his career difficult to track for all but the most ardent fans, but it's also ensured that he's never been too far out of the spotlight on a constantly changing reggae scene.

Paul was born Paul Blake in 1965. He was blind at birth, but an operation on a hospital ship succeeded in giving him a small visual capacity; he later went to New York to obtain a pair of high-powered glasses that helped even further. He attended a Salvation Army school for the blind, where he first began singing. When Stevie Wonder visited the school, Paul sang for him, and an impressed Wonder encouraged him to go into music. Paul learned the piano, drums, and guitar while still in school, and was most influenced as a singer by Dennis Brown in his early days. As Frankie Paul, he made his first recording, "African Princess," in 1980, when he was still just 15. In 1983, he appeared on two volumes in Channel One's Showdown series, one with Sugar Minott and the other with Little John. The former LP contained Paul's first major hit, the Henry "Junjo" Lawes-produced "Worries in the Dance," which aligned him with the emerging dancehall sound. Lawes also produced 1984's Pass the Tu-Sheng-Peng, whose title cut -- an ode to ganja -- was a huge, star-making hit in Jamaica.

Paul reached his prime in the mid-'80s, cutting excellent albums like the George Phang-produced Tidal Wave (1985) and Alesha (1987), and the Philip "Fatis" Burrell-produced Warning (1987). His hit singles included "Tidal Wave," "Alesha," "Cassanova," "Sara," "Fire Deh a Mus Mus Tail," "Slow Down," and many others. Paul continued to record for a variety of labels in the '90s, with LP highlights including 1991's Should I and 1994's Hard Work. To keep up his prolific recording pace, he came to depend heavily on covers, whether of reggae classics or contemporary American R&B material. He continued into the new millennium as a tremendously active presence on the reggae scene.

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Henry "Junjo" Lawes, the producer as responsible as anyone for the inexorable rise of the toasters, was also instrumental in reinventing old talent (e.g. Johnny Osbourne) or bringing out new to stardom, like Frankie Paul. Paul linked up with the producer in 1984 for a clutch of stunning hits, culminating in that year's Pass the Tu-Sheng- Peng album, titled after one of his biggest. Although still in his teens, Paul exhibited an amazing vocal maturity, reminiscent, as was his style in places, of Dennis Brown. Lawes handed over a basket of his best riddims for the set, all laid down to perfection by the Roots Radics, many, of course, based on classic Studio One numbers. That includes the fabulous ganja pumping title track, a version of "Darker Shade of Black." That single's flipside, the equally classic "War Is in the Dance," was an original riddim, although it sounds like it came straight out of the rocksteady age. That song is themed around the violence and police raids proliferating through Kingston's sound systems, as is the "Jump No Fence" (aka "Curfew the Dance"). Virtually every track on this set is of almost equal high caliber. Obviously Paul would go on to record more masterpieces over the years, but so powerful was this set, that although he'd often equal it, he seldom surpassed it.

Frankie Paul – Pass The Tu-Sheng-Peng (flac 204mb)

01 Pass The Tu-Sheng-Peng 3:30
02 Jump No Fence 3:33
03 Hot Number 3:06
04 Hooligan 3:21
05 Only You 3:02
06 War Is In The Dance 3:04
07 Don't Worry Yourself 3:19
08 The Prophet 3:23
09 Them A Talk About 3:12
10 If You 3:15

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Having recorded the Pass the Tu-Sheng-Peng album for Lawes in 1984, the next year, Paul linked with Phang for the follow-up, Tidal Wave. The title track broke over the dancehalls just like a tsunami, with a thumping version of the "Bobby Babylon" riddim. And it was the Taxi Gang's hefty, nigh earth-shattering, backings that gave this set their weight, alongside Paul's superb performances. Indeed the singer leaves one in little doubt that for him "Music Is the Staff of Life," and that he is the "King Champion," so self-confident he's willing to take on the government on "Beat Down the Fence," and Babylon itself on "Dem a Go Feel It." Of course, there's plenty of romance to be found here as well, from the pleading "Baby Come Home" to the gorgeous, rocksteady styled "Hold Me." Only 20, Paul already held the future in his hands, for this set and its predecessor cemented his stardom, and garnered considerable attention abroad. Many more fabulous recordings were to follow, but few artists had set the bar so high for themselves so early in their career.

Frankie Paul – Tidal Wave (flac 209mb)

11 Dem A Go Feel It 3:29
12 Beat Down The Fence 3:14
13 Baby Come Home 3:32
14 Music Is The Staff Of Life 3:49
15 She's Got Style 3:02
16 Tidal Wave 3:17
17 Your Love Is Amazing 3:10
18 King Champion 3:09
19 You Too Greedy 3:25
20 Hold Me 3:20

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Kamoze made his recording debut in the early '80s with a 12" single "Trouble You a Trouble Me" on Taxi and found immediate success. He then began touring as part of the Taxi Connection International Tour with Yellowman and Half Pint. During this time, Kamoze was 6' tall, reed thin and appeared too frail to contain his powerful stage presence. He followed up his first album success with Pirate, but the recording received mixed reactions and wasn't as successful. Kamoze then retaliated with several hit singles recorded on his Slekta label. One of the biggest hits from this period was "Shocking Out" which was eventually picked up by the RAS label in 1988. In 1985, Kamoze had greater success with Settle with Me, which produced such hits as "C all the Police" and "Taxi with Me." By 1988, Kamoze's successes became intermittent and his career erratic. Kamoze suddenly disappeared from the music scene. He returned with a new, more aggressive image in 1994, signing to Sony and exploded back into the charts with "Here Comes the Hotstepper." The song made its debut on the compilation reggae album Stir It Up from Columbia, and then showed up on the soundtrack of Robert Altman's feature film Pret-A-Porter. Produced by Salaam Remi, it was released as a single in 1995 and spent two weeks at the top of Billboard's Hot Singles Chart, and nearly four months appearing on various other charts. Kamoze made a video for the song and with his beefy, well-muscled physique and long dreadlocks, no longer fit the description of the liner notes on his 1983 debut album that characterized him as a "pencil thin....disentangled....six-foot vegetarian." With the success of his new single, Kamoze was now a gangster and began a series of promotional tours in LA. Kamoze refused to categorize his music and remained open to singing a variety of songs from different sources, but he took a decade long break before surfacing again. When he did, it was with Debut, a 2006 album that featured rerecordings of his early hits.

Ini Kamoze – Ini Kamoze (flac 203mb)

01 Trouble You A Trouble Me 4:49
02 World-A-Music 5:51
03 Them Thing Deh 5:30
04 General 6:21
05 Wings With Me 4:58
06 Hail Mi Idrin 4:38


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