Red Star Sounds’ Def Jamaica hip-hop/reggae fusion compilation has the feeling of an arranged marriage: The spouses don’t really know each other, they’re a little nervous in each others’ company, and while they get along OK, there’s no really chemistry involved. The inlaws didn’t really botch the marriage, but the pairing is hardly inspired.
Def Jamaica is the latest in a long, long line of efforts to get Hip-Hop and Dancehall to make beautiful music together. To date, the failures far outnumber the successes. For every bangin’ Sean Paul/Busta Rhymes collaboration, there are 10 Beenie Man/Janet Jackson and Bounty Killa/Fugees flops. But as long as selectors spin Dancehall in Hip-Hop clubs and vice-versa, and as long as the two genres share as much musical DNA as they do, someone will try to force them together.
Easier said than done. Ask Shabba. And Super Cat. And Beenie Man. And Bounty. In fact, ask Yellowman, who tried and failed with Run DMC almost 20 years ago.
Used to be that every failed Dancehall/Hip-Hop collaboration clung to the same doomed formula: Get a Hip-Hop producer, sandwich a Dancehall DJ between 2 or 3 rappers, and hope that it’s palatable for the Yankee public. On songs like 1998’s “Deadly Zone,” Bounty Killa lined up the Hip-hop producers from Bad Boy, BOTH the rappers in Mobb Deep AND Rappin’ Noyd, and called it Dancehall, even though Bounty represented one-fifth of the musical input on the song. Amazingly, Dancehall collaborations always stripped themselves of their most accessible element – the beat – and clung to indecipherable patois as the crossover ticket. The annual one or two Dancehall tunes that buss big in foreign are always songs that were authentic Dancehall hits back a yard first. Think Sean Paul’s “Gimmie the Light,” TOK’s “Chi-Chi Man,” Tanto Metro & Devonte’s “Everyone Falls In Love,” Beenie Man’s “Who Am I,” Shabba’s “Mr. Loverman,” and Cobra’s “Flex.” (Shaggy, as always, is the exception to every Dancehall rule). Same for what’s playing in the Dancehall: Rudebwoys bounce to 50 Cent and Jay-Z solo, not the latest fraudulent collaboration.
Enter Def Jamaica, which follows on the heels of Sean Paul’s chartbusting success and the cyclical renewed Yankee interest in Dancehall. Many of the 15 tracks still have the forced and hurried feel of rappers and DJs voicing tunes in different studios and never meeting each other, but there are a few steps in the right direction: Sean Paul and Busta have proven that rappers can sound good on a Dancehall rhythm, so Def Jamaica recruits some of Yard’s big-name Dancehall producers, including Dave and Tony Kelly, Sly & Robbie, Vendetta Bennett and Lenky Marsden. Also on board is Matt “In The Hat” Stein, the designated in-house Hip-Hop beatmaker.
The rhythmic results are uneven, but at least they are diverse. The best music comes from producers who stick to doing what they know how to do. Tony “CD” Kelly seems to get it, producing the most Dancehall-ish of the tracks, and coaxing the most authentic performances from his artists. Vendetta, on the other hand, is busy trying to do Matt Stein’s job: He may have signed on as a Dancehall producer, but his “Straight Off The Top” is grounded by a paint-by-numbers Hip-Hop track. Steven Marley, who continues to be Reggae’s greatest wasted talent, indulges his Hip-Hop producer fantasy with yet another forgettable, ordinary Hip-Hop rhythm. In fact, Marley’s track, “Lyrical .44,” featuring Method Man, Redman and Jr. Gong, wastes the greatest concentration of talent on the entire album. Everyone turned in a good verse, but they’re let down by Steven’s cliched beat. In fact, all of the Hip-Hop rhythms on the album veer toward the ordinary, with Stein clearly out of his league in his role as Rap guru.
By and large, the pairings seem random and poorly conceptualized. Buju is wasted on “Sweetness,” where he embroiders Cam’Ron’s mundane menage-a-trois fantasies. Tanto Metro & Devonte don’t mesh with Joe Budden on “Mardi Gras,” and the two very good badman tunes “Anything Goes,” and “Murder” would have been much better with a real badman DJ, instead of getting by with Lexxus and TOK. “Na Na Na Na” just has too many damn cooks in the kitchen, with all three members of 112 joining Spragga, Lady Saw, Buccaneer and Jr. Gong on one schizophrenic track.
Def Jamaica does have its high points though. “Anything Goes,” driven by Tony Kelly’s insistent rhythm and Wayne Wonder’s undeniable rude bwoy chorus, is a winner. Ditto “Murda,” another K. Licious production that showcases inspired rhyming by TOK and Scarface. “Girls Callin’” (yep, Tony Kelly again) is a high-energy sexcapade, and both Elephant Man and Ghostface Killah sound like they’re giving it the full hundred.
Def Jamaica tries to make up for the lack of top level performances by adding three “Bonus Tracks” that are actually remixes that have been around the block for a while. The oldest is “Top Shotta” - featuring Vegas, Sean Paul and DMX, but, as we all know, Vegas and Sean Paul have beef and don’t even perform together anymore. Jay-Z shows up on the “Dancehall Remix” of “Frontin’” but the only thing Dancehall about it is the addition of Vybz Kartel, and since he’s twanging about his Rocawear apparel, maybe he’s not really reppin’ Dancehall. Only the fairly recent “Dude” remix with Beenie Man justifies its place on the album. In fact, with it’s bouncing beat and complimentary performances by all the artists,”Dude” hints at what a good Hip-Hop/Dancehall collabo should be.
THE VERDICT: We at Reggaematic like our Dancehall (and our Hip-Hop) straight up and undiluted – no chaser. So maybe you fusion fans will appreciate this attempt at cross-polination more than we did. Def Jamaica has four or five songs that we really like, and it's no coincidence that they happen to be the most Dancehall flavoured tracks on the album. The rest of Def Jamaica sounds mediocre to us.
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