It’s been too long.

When Reggaematic Magazine was last seen ruling the Internet, Ricky Trooper was still a relevant selector. Nobody knew what the hell a Vybz Kartel was. People didn’t really dance when they went to the Dancehall.

Everything’s changed.

Sound Trooper is now everybody’s beating stick, Vybz is sweet to the belly, and you need a cheat sheet to keep up with all the silly (and fun) new dances. While we were away, we missed the opportunity to tell you how excited we were by Spragga Benz’s uneven, but brilliant Fully Loaded; how stunned we were that Capleton could produce an album as perfect as Still Blazin;’ and how disgusted we were by Beenie Man’s Tropical Storm. We couldn’t bemoan the Dancehall ignorance that fueled Rebel Tone’s victory in World Clash 2002 or challenge Dancehall’s passivity in the aftermath of the September 11.

We won’t bore you with why we were away: Business, politricks, legal shegry, boredom. Horse dead and cow fat. In the interim, Dancehall and raggaspace moved on without Reggaematic. The flood of email we once received begging us to return has dried up. Other Internet publications have sprung up in our absence, and the old veterans have evolved and sometimes even become profitable (Big up yuhself, Scrappy!).

But Reggaematic would not have returned if we thought that we were irrelevant. Maybe we’re just boasie, or maybe Bob was right when he said that “every need/ has an ego to feed,” but we believe that no publication, Internet or print, then or now, offers the in-depth, Dancehall-centric analysis of our beloved music that Reggaematic can provide. We’re back for the hardcore fan who wants quality writing about quality music, informative interviews and thought provoking features. We’ll leave the gossip, the up-to-the-second news and the profiteering to people who can handle it better than we can.

For our return, Reggaematic is coming at you with both barrels blazing. First and foremost is the re-launch of www.reggaematic.com, which, in a couple months, will again be the epicenter of raggaspace (why be modest?). We have some content still to upload, some articles to get back from deadbeat magazine publishers and we need more space to put our encyclopedic archives of interviews and album reviews back on the web. Work with it, fada... big tings, soon come. Trust me.

Second, we’re giving you Reggaematic Magazine in .pdf format. Please download it, print it, email it to your friends. The web site and the .pdf magazine will each have some unique content, so check out both of them. Hopefully, you’ll see Reggaematic on a newsstand near you in the foreseeable future, but we haffi walk before we run, seen?

We hope you enjoy the new serial... if you do – or if you don’t – write us. We want to have a letters page in our magazine, and we want to know that you care. Link up!

Good to be back. Enjoy.

Bless.

milo@reggaematic.com