Every week resident FADER selector Eddie STATS runs through dancehall riddims and other artifacts from the ghetto archipelago.
Step into the future, bitches. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me. Also, it’s the first Ghetto Palms of '09. By all rights I should have some dancehall bombshells to drop on you because traditionally Jamaicans do Christmas big and Christmas dances are the time to brukk out with new tunes and dances that producers have been holding back all year—Baby Cham’s “Ghetto Story” is a good example. But as I’ve discussed quite a bit here and in the pages of FADER, 2008 is the year that the bizarro-word rules of Jamaican music officially went reverse-bizarro. Riddims have not completely disappeared but one offs ruled the set, and to paraphrase my doops Max Glazer who recently played a holiday set at Kingston’s Quad nightclub, Laden’s “Time to Shine”—which debuted here a few weeks ago was “the biggest forward tune that’s not some kind of murderous gun-lyric song.”
Even though no single riddim emerged to dominate the holiday bashments I still have a backlog of good ones to run true, if only because I’ve been off-duty and my inbox has been filling every day while I knocked back eggnog like Danny English (Diwali jokes!). Anyway, my first New Year’s resolution is more music and less talking so I will let these three speak for themselves:
Kalashnikov riddim:
Opal, “It Clean”
TOK, “Hard Enough”
Young Veterans ft. Dee Dre, “No Bad Mind Fi We”
Anthony B, “Nuh Fraid”
Shawn Storm, “Ready fi Murder”
Ole Geezer riddim:
Tifa & Natalie Storm, “Talk of the Town”
Timberlee, “Backdoor Delivery”
Ward 21, “Respect”
Beenie Man, “Look So Hot”
Wayne Wonder, “It’s Life”
Vybz Kartel, “Hop Off”
Jet Blue riddim:
Cutty Ranks, “No Man to Me”
Bubba, “Lock off the Thing”
Buju Banton, “Ruff and Bad”
New Kid, “Big Up the Gangsters”
Delly & Mitch, “Want to Know”