Truthfully, I was planning to do some kind of Ghetto Palmes d’Or like last year but at the critical moment of reflection I found myself kayaking down a semi-tropical backwater in Jupiter, Florida trying to decide if the prehistoric-size bird flapping away from me was a stork or a heron. By the time I got back to the fortress of palmitude here in BK—which is where I left the recording equipment and also my work ethic—it just felt more appropriate to just dive right back into new stuff. Retrospection floats.
GP84 NeoPoco Blend
Leftside aka Mr. Evil, “In Deh”
Busy Signal, “Easy Access”
Jhon el Legendario f. Tony Cruz, “Este Ritmo” (new version)
Khaled, “Rai Arai” (DJ SMS remix)
Download: Ghetto Palms NeoPoco Blend
In that spirit, I’m launching 2010 with two of the tracks I’m most excited about playing out this January: Leftside’s “In Deh” and the crazy Busy Signal gem “Easy Access.” The first is doing its thing in the dancehalls of the greater Caribbean basin while the second came out earlier in '09 but managed to totally escape my attention until I stumbled across it on a Colombian dancehall site, following up on the Cartagenian bounce inclusion from Ghetto Palms 83. Both riddims feel like very 2010 updates on the basic pocoman pattern that jumped islands from dancehall to reggaeton circa 1990.
That being the case it felt only right to give the Cartagenians a mention and “Este Ritmo” nicely captures the pocomania ethos. A DJ SMS remix of a Rai/Reggada/Reggaeton track from Khaled (via Jace Rupture’s Mudd Up blog shows just how versatile the combo of marching step and Apache-style percussion can be.
