from the LP Dread in A Babylon, TR International Records, 1975
When Jamaican youths started toasting new rhymes over their favorite rock steady & reggae versions in the late ‘60s, you can rest assured that none of them foresaw their skills moving far beyond Kingston’s various neighborhood sound systems, let alone trying to grasp the eventual impact this approach to music would have on the entire world, essentially becoming a large part of the impetus for MCs around NYC to begin rapping atop disco breaks a decade later. Whether or not he was actually the very first individual to ever utter words in a toasty style, there’s no debating that Ewart ‘U-Roy’ Beckford is indeed the man who gets credit for being the primary artist to take it from the streets and into the studio, thus turning ears from far outside the ghetto onto this new approach. This entire LP smokes (…so it’s not just a smart photo on the album cover…), choosing both well-known & obscure cuts to edit, including this chilled out re-dux of the Wailers’ old track “Rebel’s Hop”, which amply displays U-Roy’s method of lyrical attack. The cool thing is that hip-hop itself later went on to mold and guide dancehall into what we hear today, completing the circle that was started down in Jamaica so many decades ago. Word.
