Contents - Beth Lesser

collaborations and trying to create a unique thing, so I said, ‘It would be a
great thing for you and Shabba’, cause its Shabba’s line of lyrics, reasoning
and thought.”
As the original 45 by Krystal was already a big hit, Shabba had developed
lyrics for it. But, Shabba had a slightly different take on the age difference.
“What this girl thinking, she want an elderly man. She’s thinking about the
dollar bill.” * Krystal sings, “I’m in love with a man nearly twice my age, I don’t
know what it is, but it’s a thing from youthful days,” and Shabba replies, “She
wan’ no idle juby, She nah wan’ no lovers honey – she wan’ the money.”
Gussie didn’t stop there. Knowing that once a rhythm is popular, other
producers will jump on the bandwagon, Gussie decided to run the rhythm
into the ground himself, coming up with Cocoa Tea’s ‘Half My Age’ and
several other versions.
proBlem wiTh diGiTal
By the end of the ‘90s, reggae was almost unrecognizable from what it
had been in 1980. The advent of digital music couldn’t help but change the
way reggae was produced and consumed. It brought reggae more in line with
what was being made in commercial studios all over the world. The digital
programming was what allowed reggae to break out of its ethnic confinement
and become a world class pop genre. But here was also a downside.
With the universal use of the same computer programs, the music had lost
much of what made it unique. Bass player Flabba Holt complained, “Once,
when you play music, you coulda know seh that song come from Channel One
Studio, that one come from Joe Gibbs [studio], that one come from Treasure
Isle, the other one come from Studio One. Nowadays, you don’t know where
the song record. Everything sound the same way. It’s the same Pro Tools ** .”
Gussie agrees, adding that the new digital rhythms could be created by
anyone regardless of training or talent. “These people who are making records
now, they are not even musicians. When the people playing were actual musicians,
there was natural quality control in the original music.” Once hobby
producers were able to enter the market professionally, the sudden onslaught
of new rhythms and releases overwhelmed an already strained market and
watered down the music.
By the late 1990s, getting into the business required no special skills or
knowledge. “[Now], if he has enough resources,” Gussie continues, “[the artist]
can build a home studio, hire musicians, and voice his song himself. That’s
what [is] kind of messing up the thing. Let’s say the artist wants to say, ‘It’s
my studio it’s recorded in. Me write it, me mix it, me produce it, and, don’t be
surprised, me gwan publish it meself’. That is the ‘me’ factor. What it is doing
is letting us lose our uniqueness, a quality and standard for which we have
* CKLN appearance
** Pro Tools is a program for creating and mixing music digitally
330 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall