UB40 – Until my dying day

Release Date: Nov 95
Chart Position: 15

James BC
Until My Dying Day is where UB40’s digital neggae sound finally reaches its peak. They’ve now computerised every aspect of the track to the point where the band could probably walk off stage (possibly after a disagreement about royalties from the Geffrey Morgan album) and the song would carry on playing exactly the same. Normally you can at least rely on the brass to bring a bit of acoustic warmth, but here Brian Travers has got his hands on 808 state’s old electro-clarinet and replaced his lusty parping with an atmospheric tootling effect. Meanwhile the standard reggae keyboard stabs give way to a fiddly synth figure and Jimmy Brown has given up completely and delegated the drumming to that syndrum pad from Phoenix Nights that “shits on a cowbell”.
Up to this point, the more digital UB40 have got, the cheesier they’ve got. But on this track the complete abolition of any human input actually takes them back to something a little more like their 1980 sound: spooky, menacing, questioning, unresolved. You can’t really call it reggae, which is shocking to say about a UB40 track, but the fact is if skank was water this would be the Atacama Desert. Even so, there is a fair bit to like:
that endless synth figure draws you in and gets under your skin, the moody strings for once don’t sound out of place, and Ali’s voice really suits the mood: often mealy-mouthed on the love stuff, he sounds sinuous and compelling slinking around in the synthy gloom, singing about how he’s not going to tell us the thing he’s telling us he’s not going to tell us.
Overall, then, this does a lot wrong, but gets a fair bit right almost by accident. If every neggae song had sounded like this then I doubt Vince and the boys would have bothered with the blog, but I can go with it as a one-off. Bonus points as well for using the same four chords as Get Lucky – sing one over the other on your tea break and enjoy.
Score: 6 out of 10.

Norm
Another bout of UB40. That’s two weeks in a row of inspiring, islandic beats and tunes…. I think not. In fact, I’m not even sure how this makes it on to the Hot 90. I’ve come to the realization that you either love UB40 (Ali Campbell) or you hate them. I fall into the latter category. I’m tired, I’m bored of having to review this group over and over again. When will it end? It seems that we get a UB40 hiatus every now and then, I recover mentally and boom, there they are, same $h*t different day. This is gonna be hard to review as I only had a chance to listen to it a couple of times before the link broke. Maybe it’s for the best. My first impressions are not good, I did try to locate another version, found some dodgy remix that made it slightly more acceptable to listen to than the one provided. Here are my initial thoughts.
1) This is bad
2) This is too slow
3) The Ali C show has run its course
4) They still employ the same videographer
5) This is bad
6) I wish I was listening to Shaggy
1/10 – no explanation needed – see above notes

Jonny
I think that this is worst song we have do so far. I had to play youtube link a number of times on different devices as I was convinced it didn’t work and even looked for different versions online as I thought there was some kind of error, but it really is that shit. What the hell were they doing? Ali’s sounds like he’s doing an impression of Vic and Bob doing an impression of Ali Campbell with a cold. The delivery is so bad, I was expecting better from the UB’s….
I really can’t think of a single positive…..its no longer than 3.42mins long? As far as I am aware no one has died? But that is about it. I’m starting to think that the ride is over, neg is dying.
Although its bad I do think that UB40 have offered up a very poignant moment in neg history, with it symbolising the death of something once loved by so many. Like Airwolf, The A Team, Michael Jackson and Heartbreak High, you just wish it could have ended on a high, but they kept on and on at it. Neil Young once wrote ‘it’s better to burn out than to fade away’, and I feel this is never more true than this effort from the UB.
A sad day, the beginning of the end for neg 1/10.

Vince
Until My Dying Day was a non-LP single, released as a tie-in for UB40’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2. If you look at the tracklisting, they should have really called it “UB40: The Neggae Years” – as without the resurgence in the popularity that we are covering on this blog, I don’t think the LP (and therefore this lead single) would have been created or released. So Until My Dying Day is basically the most Neggyist of Neg – It’s self-fulfilling Neggae.
A fairly downbeat and melancholy number, it attempts to deal with age old issues of trust and confidentiality in love. Unfortunately, the questioning-slash-bargaining tone of the “tell-me-your-secrets-and-I-won’t-tell-a-soul” lyrics just come across as a little bit paranoid bordering on passive-aggressive.  A lot of UB40 music is imbibed with the positive qualities of Marijuana – the bouncing, good vibes , the cheery lyrics. Well this is the flipside.
Sonically it is great, a very modern sounding production which I bet would still sound great on a decent digital radio today. For me it’s certainly 90sdance-influenced, with the synth washes and electronic baselines highlighting that the YowBees must have been to a rave or three. And is it me, or is the melody a rip from the verse part of this banger?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frCFXsInI4U
Where UB40 are clever musicians though you can still here the reggae influences throughout. Top stuff.
Videowise, well it’s not going to win any awards. UB40’s videos are always a fairly bland experience; and after a couple of weeks of Suggs mugging for the camera this feels like a Ingmar Bergman short. Moody look bass-playing, stroppy drumwork, a touchy performance from Ali – its what you expect. Wasn’t expecting a burial scene in a modern 90s apartment. Whose death was being commemorated though? Yitzak Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 when this came out – but its not him.
In fact, its not a person they are putting six feet under; its Neggae itself. This is UB40’s last effort on the Neggae Hot 90 – and they’re saying “Without us, this scene is dead”. They’re metaphorically taking the ball home because their Mum’ just shouted that the Findus Crispy Panakes, chips and beans are ready. She’s called time on the Neggae kickabout.
Score: A Show-closing 8 out of 10 for me.

Gouldy
This week we find Ali and the chaps in cagey mood with ‘Until my dying day’. I can only think that the boys had some moody funk before recording this as there’s a paranoid almost cold war like feel to this, it’s the Le Carre novel of Neggae.  The production could be by Vangelis from the ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack with its minimal electro feel and sinister strings.
Lyrically Ali is promising not to reveal an un-named person’s secret for love nor money until the day he dies. I’m not sure of the sincerity of this promise as he could die at any moment, he can’t predict being fatally crushed by a palm tree or falling into one of Birmingham’s many canals and drowning, I can only assume he used one of those internet life expectancy clocks and actually thought it was true.  He seems to be directly referencing the tabloids at one point saying he won’t sell at any price (although given some of the shit they’ve churned out for cash I’m not sure this is strictly true)
‘Don’t ask me what I saw
You know my secrets not for sale’
Which makes me wonder what this neggae secret is, so I’m running a book* if anyone is interested.
*In the event of a palpable error no bets will be settled or stakes refunded.

Evens – Shabba Ranks bums cats;

5/1 – Chaka Demus and Pliars are the neggae equivalent of Milli Vanilli;

10/1 – CJ Lewis is actually Dion Dublin;

20/1 – Snow was actually Jon Snow in disguise and was an international hoodwink on the scale of Orson Welles doing ‘War of the Worlds’;
The video looks like it was shot in some shitty bar/club in the nineties, or present day if you’re in Woking, and doesn’t have a lot going on in it. It mainly consists of moody shots of the boys dressed in their Foster suits and black shirt and tie combos and sums up the whole thing pretty well as it’s pretty mundane.
This sums up the mood when the bar runs out of Red Stripe, Neggae is supposed to be fun.
4/10 as they’ve done worse.

NEGGAE SCORE: 4.0

Suggs – Camden Town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyaEEYeR7w

Release Date: Oct 95
Chart Position: 14

Vince
Camden Town is effectively Suggs’ loveletter to his old stomping ground, an affectionate ode to the streets where he are the Nutty Boys grew up and cut their teeth. Take note, this is not about London per  se– but specifically NW1. Madness were famously travel-shy, failing to capitalize on their National fame in the early 80s by missing tour after tour. A fondness for the plethora of North London boozers, caffs, the green stuff and lie-ins were the general reasons cited. As manager Dave Robinson cited in the excellent “If it Aint Stiff” BBC4 docco, “Madness didn’t want to leave Camden Town” LET ALONE THE BIG SMOKE.

So its no surprise Suggs felt the borough should be committed to vinyl – but is it any good? Yes, it is actually. It’s no Boombastic, but it doesn’t deserve some of the scorn that I’m sure the other Elders will heap on it. Suggs turned in some stinkers during the fag-end years of Neggae don’t get me wrong, but (just like the place itself) Camden Town is not without its charms.

Seeing instantly recognizable 90s London filmed over a reggae soundtrack gave me a pang of nostalgia for the Opening Credits of Desmonds. Don’t Scratch My Sofa. F*ck me what a tune. Like Free Nelson Mandela but with added record scratches. But instead of young, beautiful, black urbanites we have Suggs doing his drunken-tiptoeing-to-bed-so-I-don’t-wake-the-missus dance – endearing when he was 19 but less so with a middle-aged derby. Fair play to the video producers for shelling out on a trip to JA though – I reckon this video alone cost more than all of Bitty MaClean’s put together.

As for the song – well it the Theme tune to Coco pops isn’t it? Have a listen.

That or Um Bungo.
I’ve always been partial to both of these ditties, but I’ve never felt the urge to base a pop song around it. That said, Noel Gallagher launched his career off the back of an Old Coke jingle – so maybe they’re on to something. Maybe in 20 years time I should dine off that Reisen song. Might get a number one out of it. Although by then I imagine pop music will be reduced 6 second Vine holograms consumed by domestic help drones scanning a barcode directly into humans eyes. Actually I’m not going to bother. Can’t be f*cked with it.

Back to the here and now –the production is what truly saves this. Sly and Robbie, the Leiber and Stoller of Neggae, craft a gorgeous low slung groove that covers all of the imperfections listed above. Echoed drum breaks, punchy keys, heavy horns – it’s a delight. I’d quite like to hear a dub version of it actually. with Finley Quaye on vox. And at least Suggs is mullering his own record, and not murdering the Beatles or Simon and Garfunkels.
Score: 6/10 – well done Suggs.

James BC
Here’s Suggs again, and once again I dread to think what the others are writing. Sometimes it seems I’m the only person in the world who looks back fondly on the Suggs’s 90s solo work, and that includes the nutty man himself: in his recent autobiography he dedicates a princely one paragraph to it, almost all of which is taken up with that anecdote everyone already knows about Chris Eubank introducing Cecilia on Top of the Pops. If on the other hand you want to know what happened when Suggs went cycling around Italy with Clive Langer, you’ll be delighted to find an entire chapter on the topic. Basically nothing is the answer, by the way.
But on I press: no amount of apathy from the man himself, or antipathy from everyone else, is going to dampen my enthusiasm. Camden Town is a perfect example of what’s great about the The Lone Ranger album: a relaxed groove backing some twinkly, off-beat lyrics, this time about Suggs’s home part of London, Camden. Suggs does a good job of capturing the buzz of the place, wide-eyed visitors trying to take everything in at once, with a subtle frisson of menace in the “tourists sing” and trombone bit in the middle, plus the drunkenness and petty crime chucked in among the multicultural vibrancy. Sly and Robbie’s production is key once again – Suggs wears it so lightly that you’d hardly guess he’s working with two of the all-time greats, but their quality does take the song up a notch.
I’m not ever so keen on the sax solo, but I’d say it’s outweighed by the valiant attempt to shoot a proper neggae video (beach dancing, larking about, sand, horns etc) on a budget of £1.75. All in all a likeable effort.
Score: 7 out of 10 – might have been more if he’d specified which exit of the underground to meet at.

Norm
Suggs, I find your music boring and about as inspirational as a toasted parsnip and mayonnaise sarnie. If you’re into that you may very well enjoy Suggs and Camden Town. I however, am not.
What did I learn from this song? Apparently Camden is a very diverse place that has a lot going on. Excellent. But having to listen to Suggs and his monotone voice for however long this song goes on is is Johnny-Gill-esque. It is painful and it irks me.
Dont get me wrong.
It has some positives.
Not many but some.
There’s some nice neggae beats, drum and horn background bits and pieces throughout. I liked that. But…
The video is annoying.
Suggs prancing around does my head in. I’ve watched this 4 times in a row trying to come up with something constructive to write but can’t. Sorry.
I wish this week’s challenge was to write a twitter style review and keep it under 140. It would’ve gone something like this:
Score: Suggs, Camden Town #cack #fellasleep #2/10

Jonny

• Screech in Saved by the Bell
• Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequel debacle
• Ross in the latter stages of the Friends saga
• Suggs in the mid 1990’s UK Neggae scene

What do these all of these characters have in common? They became irrelevant add ins to what were otherwise important social and cultural movements.

Suggs has started to ruin it for everyone with his jokey dim-witted approach. I got Madness (I think?) and although I was not their biggest fan, I did understand the relevance of their music, but Suggs on his own has contributed very little. Nothing of any importance anyway.

‘In Camden Town, I’ll meet you by the underground’ – Is that really what you have just offered up? Twat!

Score: Not wasting any more time with this. Go away Suggs!! 1/10

Gouldy
Suggs makes an unwelcome return to the hot 90 this week with his ode to Camden Town; I’m going to try to be objective about this entry as I think I managed to get rid of my vitriol in his last appearance. Being of an impressionable age during the Britpop era I spent quite a lot of time in Camden as a yout’ myself and can’t help thinking Suggs is somewhat overegging the romanticism of the place, I’ll go into details later.
I like the start to this song, it’s a proper neggae intro with the classic drum roll start and jaunty bassline that sounds like it could have sound tracked a cartoon. Obviously Suggs is still singing so this puts a bit of dampener on it but the horns are nice as well. Not so sure about the synth that’s introduced for the chorus but must admit the guitar break in there is nice and evokes memories of Siouxsie and the Banshees covering ‘Dear Prudence’. There’s a tribute to ‘Ghost Town’ later on with the vocals but I could do without his spoken refrains, it’s all bit like the elder Kevin doing voice overs in the ‘Wonder Years’, in case you were wondering Winnie Cooper turned out to be decent. The song meanders on in this manner and you know what? It’s ok, there are still a few ‘Stoppit and Tidy Up’ style noises but they’ve not been done to death.

Lyrically I have to take issue with this song with the main objection being this

‘In Camden Town I’ll meet you by the underground’

Don’t do that, you’ll just get hassled up by teenage drug dealers and end up getting skanked by buying a piece of bark for £10 under the misapprehension it’s a bit of solid, happened to a friend of a friend of mine and wasn’t me, no sireee, nothing to do with me, honest guv. After this frankly shocking piece of advice he follows it up by advocating the use of drug paraphernalia

‘There’s tapas, fracas, alcohol, tobaccos
Bongs, bongo bingo, Portuguese maracas’

Which is all very well, but this is simply a gateway to buying a load of Yellow Submarine legal highs at ‘Herman’s Head Shop’ asking the shop assistant how many you should take to get really f*cked and then thinking ‘I’m an experienced psychonaut who’s been on many missions of spiritual and physical ecstasy, I will take double the maximum recommended dose, like I do with Night Nurse’. Apparently this can then lead to nearly passing out on a crowded tube then thinking you’re better so going for a pint to level you out but then realising you’re not that much better as the pint comes straight back up into the pint glass. Don’t be pithy about these things Suggs, it’s a serious matter.
Suggs has also ignored one of my biggest gripes about Camden or more specifically promoters who hold events there and the lack of information they give out. Picture the scene, you’re in the World’s End pub enjoying a few pre club Lowenbraus and testing out the night’s Mick Mills, you have a full on gag whilst dropping the first one so you know you’re in for a good night. The pub starts calling last orders at around 11 so you move on to the Underworld for London’s Premier Britpop night. Paying your money in a state of delirium you start to sense something’s a bit wrong but can’t quite put your finger on it. You advance down the corridor and the music sounds a bit different making you think ‘Blimey, Kula Shaker’s new one sounds a bit heavy’. The doors to the main venue open and you find yourself surrounded by people wearing black make up adorned in ‘Cradle of Filth’ t-shirts, bedecked in a vintage Brazil football t-shirt, combats and a blue corduroy jacket with the Jamiroquai logo as the zip pull it’s fair to say you’re standing out as the twat who didn’t know the night had changed. Unperturbed by this experience you return to Camden a few weeks later to go to the mod night ‘Blow Up’ which is located in the upstairs of the Laurel Tree pub.  You pay your money at the door getting some strange looks form the person collecting it, as you turn the corner of the staircase you’re confronted with a crowd of burly ageing skinheads in bomber jackets as yes, ‘Blow Up’ has changed dates and you’re at a skinhead revival night with the whole scene resembling a sevs prison gym. The night out culminates with you sitting in a lounge in Hounslow at 6am whilst vomiting into a saucepan due to ingesting too much cheap speed whilst an ex con tells you he wishes you could have been in Feltham Young Offenders with him as ‘it was a right laugh and you’d have loved it in there’. Suggs had the chance to stop future generations making these mistakes and I feel his carefree attitude has meant him missing a chance to give back to society.
The video starts off with Suggs doing his ‘hilarious’ berking about shtick round Camden, he then gets the tube to Jamaica. This is again irresponsible as London Underground staff are going to have to deal with American tourists asking them which line they need to get to Jamaica. A good job Bob Crow’s not about to see this as it would drive him to a state of apoplexy. The rest of the video is Suggs basically lording up on a Tropical beach somewhere which to me seems a bit hypocritical when the whole song is singing the praises of Camden. If the lyrics were ‘Camden Town, its ok I suppose but I’d much rather be in the Caribbean’ then this would be forgivable.
Score: I’ll give this 3/10, its no ‘Waterloo Sunset’

NEGGAE SCORE:  3.8

Shaggy – Boombastic

Link to video

Release Date: Sept 95
Chart Position: 1

Jonny
So we arrive at another defining moment of neggae and arguably our last chance for a full house. I’m pretty sure we have not been able to give anything a 50/50 yet (much to Jonny Gills surprise) and I am approaching this with huge anticipation and to be honest I’m also a little nervous about it. A bit like a footballer approaching a big game knowing that they have to perform, I have been delaying the review process ensuring that I can give it my full attention and balanced opinion (that is at least an original excuse for being late again, better than Norm’s new kitchen effort, why do you need a kitchen when you’ve got an egg?). Anyway, I have just settled in with United vs. City on the box, opened a cold one and ready to give this my undivided attention. So here goes, my level headed view… This is f***ing amazing and maybe the best song that has ever been written! Shaggy enters the room by kicking in a door and smashes us with that unforgetable intro that hits you like a sandy flip flop to the face. The rusty feedback from the guitar chords is special and mentally takes you to a magical nightclub where your Shaggy’s VIP with Malibu and girls on tap. A club where pretty girls walk round handing out Rollovers and black death tar flavoured Sambuca and last orders that never quite arrive but you live constantly in that last 45mins of the night, the bit of the night when all the cool sh*t happens. Where there is always that comfortably busy amount of people on the D Floor that only really happens on TV and where there is a girl walking round with a piece of toilet paper stuck to her heel to provide a shared and common joke amongst the other party people. The lyrics are cool as and the “…touch me in my back she says I’m Mr Ro……” that leaves us hanging for a second or two is one of the best moments in neg history, pure class! Chuck in some chat about cheese and peas, turtles and and a foot bottom, it all makes for quite a ride. 10/10 from me, it don’t be no better dan dis ever!

James BC
A confession: I didn’t much care for this at the time. It was a deeper, harder proposition than the standard neggae fare, and as a Year 8 at a boys’ grammar school without a great deal of life experience the lyric didn’t really connect. A couple of decades on, though, things are different: I am a swaggering man of the world, maybe not in Shaggy’s premier division but at least around League One level, and my musical appreciation has matured. Physically, emotionally and intellectually, I am now ready to appreciate “Boombastic” to the full and give it the glowing write-up it deserves.
Because it is an astonishing track. The production must have been miles ahead of anything else in the chart at the time – it’s a painstaking deconstruction and reassembly of reggae into a minimal, hyper-tuned form where every remaining element tingles the spine. It’s a reggae version of what the Neptunes did with RnB a few years later. One snare in a bar, one piano chord, that two-stroke guitar riff, and looooots of space. Beautiful stuff, but it does need a compelling vocal to hold it all together…
…and fortunately Shaggy’s performance is out of this world. Usually songs with “Hello, this is who I am” as the subject are dicing with mortal danger – take for example the British rap non-entity Chipmunk on his debut single, gibbering about being Chip-Diddy-Chip and not tolerating lip-diddy-lip, people say he’s crazy but he don’t give a owh, the whole thing is just unspeakable, squirming garbage. Shaggy takes the same subject and makes it look like the easiest thing in the world. He’s Jesus Christ bogling across the lake while St Peter (Chip) scrabbles around getting devoured by barnacles. “She call me Mr Boombastic” – of course she does, we all do. “Say me fantastic” – yes we do. Normally I hate people like that, but in Shaggy’s case you can’t doubt his self-proclaimed greatness for a second. I don’t know who else could have pulled it off – Des Lynam maybe, before the ITV debacle, but you have to be THAT cool even to consider it.
The song is a mass of contradictions: romantic yet hilarious, monotonous yet thrilling, arrogant yet personable, experimental yet immediate. Criticisms? Well, “Boombastic” isn’t a word, so Shaggy’s probably forfeited his chance at a dictionary corner appearance, but I’m not Susie Dent. I honestly don’t see how it could ever be bettered.
Score: 10 out of 10

Vince
1974 – Muhammad Ali  sustained 8 rounds of pummeling from George Foreman in the rumble in the Jungle. Eventually exhausted by his efforts, Foreman capitulates to Ali in the last seconds of the round. The technique is named ‘Rope-a-dope’, due to Ali using the ropes to take the strain of Foreman’s punches.
1999 – Manchester United beat  Bayern Munich 2-1 by scoring goals in the 91^st and the 93^rd after trailing the entire game, thereby winning the European Champions’ League Final. Their ability to achieve success in the final minutes of a match coins the phrase ‘Fergie Time’. How times have changed.
2014 – After going  missing from the Neggae Hot 90 for about two years (In the Summertime doesn’t count) , Orville Richard Burrell finally returns with what I believe to be the greatest Neggae hit we have seen. If Shaggy wins this, I want the phrase ‘he’s done a Shaggy’ there’ to enter common parlance for any time somebody nonchalantly rocks up at the end of something and delivers with fantastic aplomb.Boombastic is quite simply a fantastic pop record – a perfect exponent of the Dancehall sound that developed in JA through the 80s and 90s. Unlike a lot of the Neggae Hot 90 it is achingly modern, and while at its core it uses a sample of King Floyd’s “Baby Let Me Kiss You”,  the production is so crisp you can hardly tell.
What hits you first are the huge guitar riffs, which for me explore the relatively overlooked relationship between Dancehall and Rock. Under mi Sleng Teng was based on an Eddie Cochran riff, and I think Boombastic cements the same, bluesy, deep-down-and-dirty feel that is common in the two genres. The song’s popularity was definitely aided by its use in the latest Levi’s advert, and I do wonder if without it such a harsh, sparse riddim could have topped the charts. But it did, and frankly, who cares?
The song structure is fantastically irregular – with multiple drum patterns switching in and out to accompany Shaggy’s incredible inventive wordplay. I also love the interchange between standard reggae chord stabs and the singular on-key pulse. Fantastic.  After listening closely to this for the first time in nearly 20 years I also noticed that there is a blazing Jimi Hendrix style guitar solo around the 1m28 sec mark. So much going on in this record.
Shaggy absolutely revels in his lothario image in the song and the video, Theophilus P.Wildebeeste incarnate. But unlike similar Neggae lovermen such as Shabba Ranks, Shaggy’s lyrical dexterity is mindbendingly surreal – more in common with US hip-hop wordsmiths. So many lines to choose from but:
“I’m just like a turtle crawling out of my shell 
Gal you captivate my body put me under a spell
With your cus cus perfume I love your sweet smell
You are the only young girl that can ring my bell “
Is my fave.
Also worth noting is the drawn out ‘Roooooo-mantic’ phrase – Shaggy cleverly managing to sound like a stopped record starting again. Lee Mack clearly a Neggae fan then.
Drawbacks? Well the song and specifically the Lover Lover catchphrase spawned a career for rubber-faced prank-phonecall DJ Steve Penk.  I never cared for him much.
Score: After Tease Me, this is the greatest Neggae song on the chart. 10/10.

Gouldy
After some fairly middling releases I’ve been looking forward to this one, the man who gave Darren Anderton his nickname makes his third Hot 90 appearance, it’s SHAGGY. This originally came to my attention when used to soundtrack a Levi’s advert and it blew me away. The combination of neggae and clay motion was an instant hit for me, like the California Raisins on a cocktail of steroids and Viagra. They advert was to promote Levi’s boglestruts which used bogletron technology. The idea was you plugged your walkman into your Levi’s boglestruts, played some neggae and let the jeans strut for you instantly turning you into a sexual panther. I tried it on the way to work this morning and it worked as I got the digits of a couple of right little saucepots (well Dave the Frog and Hoover, and I had to grab a couple of smoked Peter Stuyvesant butts to seal the deal with Hooves, but like Carling Cup goals, they all count).
The song starts with some machine gun staccato drums and then Shaggy declaring himself ‘MR BOOMBASTIC’ and I make him right. The production is groundbreaking for neggae, I’m going out on a limb and saying this is Neggae 2.0. There’s a sonic chainsaw noise which is grimier than a Victorian chimney sweep this is coupled with a piano loop which adds the neggae flavour . The beat’s off time which probably makes this the first glitch house record, there’s also a bit of psyche wigging out guitar thrown in at various stages to complete the melting pot of musical styles. I had to seek out who produced this cerebral cortex melting number and it turns out the man himself, are there no ends to this man’s talents?
Lyrically it’s Shaggy at his braggadocios best as he hammers it home he’s the Casanova of the Caribbean and there are some fantastic rhyming couplets in there, my favourite being;
‘I’m just like a turtle crawling out of my shell, Gal you captivate my body put me under a spell’
He also drags out syllables where the lyrics don’t quite scan but does it with a sexual growl, frankly when he declares ‘I’m Mr Roooooo mantic’ my nipples go hard.
The video tips a nod to the Hype Williams RnB style videos of the time with a bevy of gals whinin’ with Shaggy in a big white mansion. It’s not particularly original but it’s had a bit of cash thrown at it and suits the theme of the song perfectly.
This is like Neggae from the future people, and with that in mind it has to be 10/10.

Norm
It doesn’t get much better than this. Shaggy is Shaggy and he slides in smoothly with a sublime offering in Boombastic. A nice intro and then Shaggy is off and running with his wildly efficient and raspy vocals that are easily recognizable to anyone with half an ear for mid 90’s neg. He glides through the song from verse to verse in true ‘lyrical lover” fashion. It’s a joy to listen to but for me at 3m5s Shaggy breaks it down and accelerates rapidly for about 25 seconds worth of rap which is most indecipherable but non the less very entertaining. This leaves me head bobbing, dreaming of Malibu cocktails and feeling satisfied. At the end Shaggy then slows it down, relaxes the mood and the song ends well, drifting off with one last word, “SMOOTH”. I like it and approve whole heartedly. Shaggy’s video production isn’t up to much but in his defense, it encompasses everything Shaggy stands for, scantily clad ladies, hip thrusting and looking suave. He accomplished that quickly and for that he will only get docked a little bit for that In my opinion if you don’t like Shaggy, you’re a goon, a non musical twonk with the personality of big Sam and probably enjoy listening to Ali Campbell while supping a ginger beer shandy.
Put me down for 9.9/10 only missing out on the ultimate prize because of a slightly dodgy video.

NEGGAE SCORE: 9.98

C.J Lewis – R to the A

Release Date: Sept 95
Chart Position: 34

James BC
God bless CJ Lewis and his made-up patois. He encapsulates the neggae era for me more than any other artist, mainly because I can’t imagine him existing, let alone having any kind of success, at any other time. So it’s fitting that his last act as a commercial proposition was to release this paean to the style that was so good to him, and us, and the entire world of music.
R to the A, short for R to the A to the G to the G to the A (Ay!), means RAGGA, which means dancehall, only nobody called it dancehall in the 90s. And CJ’s tribute is brilliant. I don’t care that the production sounds like three Will Smith songs rammed together and has as much to do with Jamaica as Merlene Ottey (she’s Slovenian now, look it up) – CJ could rap over Enya and it would still make anyone’s barbecue playlist. He is neggae incarnate and he brings his A game here, having noticeably improved since Sweets For My Sweet (do I hear some Apache Indian-style quarter tones?), and creates the upbeat, all-inclusive party banger that neggae deserves.
If only this were better remembered it could be the national anthem of neggae. At the very least, when the inevitable jukebox musical (working title: Boombastic!) goes into production it should open the show. Well done CJ for showing everyone that he wasn’t a one-hit wonder or purely a covers merchant – this original outshines Sweets For My Sweet, which is high praise indeed.
Score: 9 out of 10

Gouldy
CJ Lewis is back this week and it’s an apt time for him to pop up as he’s ditched Judith, Daphne and the rest of the eggheads to go solo in Revenge of the Egghead in which he plays a pantomime villain parody of himself sneering at members of the public when they get a question wrong, it’s not great if I’m honest, I prefer Pointless.  CJ’s latest offering in the Hot 90 (is it 90 anymore? I’m sure like the Warriors we’ve lost some soldiers on this epic journey. Does anyone care anymore? I didn’t realise nineties reggae was so arduous, I’m going to require a 6 month stint in the Priory after this) is Neggae’s Y.M.C.A with the chorus shouting out individual letters to spell Ragga, actually it spells Raggaa, a basic bit of sub-editing wouldn’t have gone amiss here, wouldn’t surprise me if Norm wrote the chorus.
The production on this is pretty much RnB as it samples the And the beat goes on by the Whispers which was also famously used by Will Smith for Gangsta Rap smash Miami. I’m not really sure there’s much Neg about the production but I don’t care as it’s a great tune and has been used nicely in this case. Lyrically it basically encapsulates the prevailing attitudes and whole culture surrounding ragga like the Neggae equivalent of those oh so clever twats who used to do Shakespeare in 60 seconds. The basic message is we’re here to have a good time, have a dance and a few beers by all means, you can even chance your arm with the ladies but the minute you step out of line we’re coming down on you like a like a cigarette burn to the neck you dry lunch.
The video was shot at CJ’s infamous gig at Harper’s in Guildford when the bouncers threatened to throw him out for wearing trainers but luckily he had a mate who lived in Godalming with the same size feet so got a cab over there and borrowed a pair of shoes. CJ is shown dancing about with some attractive young ladies whilst channelling the man from Del Monte in that dodgy whistle. There’s the first recorded incident of product placement in a neggae video as one of the said ladies is shown sparking up a Rothmans, naturally that wouldn’t be allowed now but these were more innocent times where you were still allowed to drink 8 pints and drive, at least that’s what most of my mates seemed to think.
Score: Overall this is D to the E to the C to the E to the N to the T A and gets a 7/10 from me.

Norm
I’m late again. Feeling the pressure from everyone apart from James BC (which I appreciate) I had good intentions to get this review in on time but this has been a mother of a week. I won’t go into too much detail but I will let you in on the reason why I didn’t make it last night. Having bought a new leather sofa recently, I’ve become quite protective over it and have good intentions of keeping it in pristine condition. I am constantly telling the kids off for eating and drinking on it, you know the drill, “NO CRUMBS, DON’T SPILL THAT, PLEASE DON’T MAKE A MESS” Anyway, the kids are pretty well trained now, the dog however is not. I walk around the corner and see our 80lb Labrador snoring and chillaxin’ on my sofa. I struggle to get her off and give her a boot up the arse, in doing so I think I broke my foot, tore a metatarsal or something like that. All I know is that the dog strolled off and fell asleep in the corner and I had to limp around with a grimace on my face for the rest of the night. But, back to CJ Lewis and R to the A.
I don’t remember this one if I’m honest. It starts off nicely in typical CJ fashion with a quick rap intro. Then we roll right into some sort of Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr (AKA Snoop Doggy Dogg) influence. I kept looking around for Warren G to pop up on stage and help CJ out, take the mic and roll into a smooth verse with Nate Dogg. Sadly, they never materialized and CJ gets back to what CJ does – More fast paced vocals in his unique island style.
The pace of the song was pretty good but in my opinion CJ was confused with this effort, veering off on an odd tangent with the R to the A to the G to the G to the A. I kind of like it, I kind of don’t like it. It’s a little like watching Liverpool play, they pass it nicely for most of the game then Suarez dives and gets a penalty thus leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
Score: So, for this CJ effort, I’m slap bang in the middle with a 5/10. Could do better, could do worse. It had me head bobbing for half of it anyway. I’m off to put my foot on ice. Peace out.

Jonny
R to the A the double G Smash!!! I really shouldn’t like this but some reason I do, especially given the last few days I have had. Trying to get Audi to claim accountability for a very obvious defect on their rear view mirrors is a bigger task than I first imagined. I clearly checked my mirrors and there was no sign of that large expensive 4×4 parked behind me, until I hit it then it appeared, how is that my fault? But for some reason those shrewd Germans are sticking to their guns and refusing to accept responsibility. Anyway at least insurance companies are an understanding and compassionate breed of people to deal with!
So CJ’s offering was a pleasant surprise that I really thought I would hate, especially given the very linear projection of his most recent hits:

Sweets for my Sweets #3
Everything is Alright #10
Best of my Love #13
Dollars #34

Things were not on the up in Sept 95 for CJ and if you were a betting man you would not put any money on his next release being good for anything apart from “Now That What I Call Summer Guff fodder”. However I do find it likable in a guilty pleasure type of way. I think the sampling of And The Beat Goes On is maybe what tips the balance for me, I quite like that tune.
So, it’s no Sweets for my Sweets by any stretch of the imagination, but better than I expected, maybe my expectations were simply very low this week.
Score: 6/10 from me this week!

Vince
CJ Lewis returns with the first (and unfortunately only) hit offering from his difficult 2nd LP, Rough ‘N’ Smooth. It was a wholly slicker affair, with CJ taking in pop and r’n’b influences. And while hugely popular in the Far East (shifted 150,000 copies in the first week) its smooth sound signalled the beginning of the end of CJ’s popularity in the UK – his original fanbase preferring the hardcore dancehall of his earlier releases (i.e. before Sweets etc.) While this UK-lite version of the NegJack Swing sound we’ve seen before is not really my cup of tea, CJ should be commended for trying to take Neggae in a new direction.
His label RCA were clearly confident in the new style, as the video is an altogether more lush affair than we had seen from him. Gone are the Sharp Viewcam gonzo promos shot beneath the Bullring, and in is a glossy, nightclub flick that Bobby Brown would have been proud of.
On first inspection, the production of the song is high end too, and the using the Whispers sample is a nice touch. However, if you want to here how Disco and Dancehall should be spliced together, check out Noisybunch records. It makes R to the A sound pretty one-dimensional.
By 1995, just as swingbeat was being phased out in the US for the heavier, more street R’n’B, the UK was going swingbeat mad. And it was a specifically UK strain of Swingbeat – well-intentioned but just a bit naffer than the real thing. And while I’m fond of it’s quaintness – its basicaly like New Jack on rations. If new Jack Swing is the Big-Mac, then this sort of sound is the Wimpy Bender-in-a-bun. The beats aren’t as polished – and there are very few real hip-hop references Think of those harsh rat-a-tat beats that open BBD’s Poison; These are replaced by metronominic Bontempi kepboard beats and a G-Funklite whistle. Fastlove, Return of the Mack, PJ and Duncan’s If I give you my number – all share the same sound as this.
But is Ro to the A Neggae? Well, that’s where CJ comes in. His toasting is absolutely neggaesque – and his vocal dexterity is a vast improvement on his earlier efforts. But that’s it. And maybe if he’s have riddimified the skankometer by another 15% he’d have impressed me (and more importantly his old skool bredren) a little more.
Score: 6/10

NEGGAE SCORE: 6.6

Suggs – I’m only sleeping

Release Date: Aug 95
Chart Position: 7

James BC
Suggs dives into his wholly uncalled-for mid-90s solo career with a cover of a hazy, mazy Beatles song about sleep – an odd fit for a man associated with frenetic heavy heavy monster ska. The contradiction actually works to the song’s advantage, though: Suggs and his secret-weapon producers Sly and Robbie seem to be testing John Lennon’s song to destruction, seeing how much noise they can chuck into it and still make it sound at all sleepy. They add a driving rhythm, clattering drums, 2-tone trombones and all sorts of sound effects but the tune stands the test: it retains an oneiric quality amid the racket thanks to Suggs’ unrushed delivery, the slightly meandering song structure and that heavy-eyed Lennon melody.
The trombonist is the MVP here, supplying both the introduction and an excellent solo later on. I wonder if it’s Rico – it sounds a bit like him anyway. Suggs clearly learnt from Ali Campbell’s mistake last week: where Ali took ‘solo career’ a bit too literally, kicking everyone else out and leaving just him and a Casio with the presets from the last UB40 release, Suggsy picks his collaborators well. Sly and Robbie are on drums and bass, Madness’s Mike Barson is on keys and I think the ‘hey, hey’ bits are Chas Smash, aka the Bez of Madness, albeit a Bez capable of writing a worldwide hit song. Add the cameo from Rico or his identical twin and it’s a neggae/ska supergroup, and for once the whole proves equal to the sum of its parts and not a Velvet Revolver-type hubristic disaster.

Sound-wise, the song is very much neggae rather than ska. Sly and Robbie do their job and this fits very nicely alongside their other productions of the era. It’s meticulous, catchy and never short of ideas. If it recalls anything by Madness I’d say it has something of the atmosphere of Cardiac Arrest, especially the chorus, but that would only be the faintest echo and the song succeeds on its own terms. If it has a flaw, it’s the bit about watching the world outside your window – who looks out of the window when they’re trying to sleep? But that’s John Lennon’s fault, not Suggs’. Maybe he let Yoko write that line.
Realising that not every young neg-head would have heard of Madness, Suggs wisely made I’m Only Sleeping a double A-side with a track of his own to avoid being written off as a covers merchant, a poor man’s Bitty McLean or CJ Lewis. For me his original earns its place alongside the Beatles song, the Ray Davies-type lyric suiting Suggs’ voice perfectly and bringing back lots of fond memories of British seaside holidays. Sly and Robbie’s production is on the money once again, a pretty piano figure giving way to triumphant trombones as Suggs approaches his destination, all underpinned by insistent neggae drums and organ. It’s the perfect song to play in the car when you’re going away, alternating with Dizzee Rascal and Typically Tropical all the way down to Redruth.
Much like Suggs’ holidays, this release isn’t all ointment and no flies. I’m not going to stick up for the videos, which both contain some truly terrible dancing; the songs are a slightly slower tempo than Suggs is used to and he clearly doesn’t know what to do with himself, gamely settling on a combination of dad-dance bopping and Marcel Marceau hand waves. But this isn’t music for dancing, it’s music to enjoy on a lazy afternoon. Many ageing artists have attempted songs about middle-aged domesticity and few have emerged with any credit, but Suggs has the charm, the down-to-earthness and the contacts to pull it off.
Score: 7.5 out of 10 (7 for Off On Holiday, 8 for I’m Only Sleeping)

Jonny
You need pretty big conkers to cover something like this, so hats off to Suggs on that front. But that is as far as it goes I’m afraid, this is poor! I’m struggling to think of what to write about it as I feel any significant time spent trying to analyse this mess would just be wasted. However for some reason it reminds me of something strange. Quite some years ago I used to be a big fan of Live & Kicking (Zoe Ball used to look OK back then) and in particular used to look forward to the Hit Miss or Maybe section of the show, watching the top 3 records of the week and have some celebrities do a quick review of them (almost like an earlier more crude but more fun version of what we are doing with this blog actually). Anyway I remember one week Brian McFadden was on it as Westlife had just hit the big time so must have been roughly 1998’ish and they were reviewing John Lennon’s Imagine as it had been rereleased for charity. Can’t remember who else was with him but he gave a Maybe! Pulling a funny face and waggling his over sized comedy thumb horizontally to indicate neither a yay or a nay! Even Theakston looked stunned: “You what Brian? You think this a Maybe do you?” Brian replied ‘Well it’s OK. It’s not my sort of thing. I would have thought that they could have jazzed it up a bit with some sort of funky backbeat or sumting (Irish for something)” I remember shouting at the TV “What the f**k you talking about you Paddy Di*k!!! You have no clue about anything. Go and be miserable somewhere and never appear on my TV again”. Although I wanted bad things for him I never would have wished Kerry Katona upon him! That is too much!! Anyway even the rest of the panel looked surprised and let McFadden hang himself with them all giving it rave reviews as one of the best songs ever written, timeless, hope it generates some money for the charity, etc, etc. McFadden looked like a twat and started to backtrack but Theakston was having none of it and said that he had given us his opinion and that was that. You have to live with your mistakes Brian, of all people you should know that! Why do I recall this tale I hear you ask? Well I’ll tell you why. I reckon that if Brian McFadden were to review Suggs’s I’m Only Sleeping he would be like a pig in sh*t! He’d love it. Taking a beautiful song and cheapening it seems to be what flicks his switch. This is so bad even Brain McFadden would like it – 2/10 from me.

Norm
Oh Suggs. Bugger off. It’s been a hell of a week, I’m late submitting my review, I’m getting the traditional feisty messages from the other Neggae elders that have submitted their reviews on time and are now looking for answers from me. So, I sit in front of my computer at 8am Saturday morning with half an hour to spare before it’s time to shuttle the kids around town for footie. I click on the link with good intentions, and BOOM. Suggs, dishing out more non sensical tripe. As the video opens with a sleepy Suggs, I’m concerned that this is going to be bad. My worst fears are confirmed shortly after the nice horn introduction which helps to make it slightly Neggified. That’s about it though. The slow tempo of this one had me head bobbing, nodding off, finding myself daydreaming and wishing that I wasn’t listening to this. I get a feeling that Ali Campbell had some influence on the direction of this production. I know there is some sort of story going on with the video but honestly, I’m not bothered. It’s silly and annoying. The more the song goes on, I’m not even sure this is allowed to be even considered Neggae. Oh, feck it. I can’t do this anymore. This song and video is beyond awful. Put me down for 2/10 and that goes to whoever is in charge of the horns.

Gouldy
So we’ve arrived at the point of neggae I’ve been dreading, it’s the gurning gooner Suggs.  I’m going to come clean straight away, I’ve never been a fan of Madness as novelty bands generally do my head in. I have many friends who hold them in high regard and will bristle at me describing them as a novelty band but any band that plays toy instruments, are associated with a stupid dance and hoist there sax player up on wire are complete zaniacs in my book, Madness are Black Lace in suits and sunglasses. In fact the only thing Suggs has ever done that I enjoyed was the Channel 5 karaoke show ‘Night Fever’ and I think this is because I associate it with blazing zoots and necking Stella in an Acton flat whilst feverishly anticipating how strong that night’s betsys were going to be.
For this entry Suggs has decided to take on the Beatles, yes you’ve read that correctly, its boxing equivalent would be Butterbean taking on Tyson in his prime.  The song in question is the woozy, psychedelic ‘I’m only sleeping’ , ‘this could be interesting’ you think, ‘maybe Suggs will incorporate a neg/dub crossover to mirror the lazy, hypnotic style of the original?’. The intro immediately dispels  any such thoughts with ‘comedy’ snoring, an alarm clock and a jaunty beat beloved by fat, bald men who’ll hit the dance floor of their local pub/social club as soon as it kicks in and will clear it immediately of any females. Added to this uninspiring production you’ve got a sped up sample of some of the theme from ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ and various other cartoon sound effects including a skidding car, a cuckoo clock and other Dangermouse cast offs. I’m not even sure this can be classed as neggae as it sounds like a Legz Akimbo ska offering.
Suggs deploys his usual affected vocal style which sounds like a tranquilised Tommy Steele having a stroke, I do have to give that to him, his vocal style is distinctive but mind you so is Orville’s and I don’t see any of my mates queuing up to worship him.  He’s got some female backing singers which are probably Louchie Lou and Michie One in attempt to keep the wolf from the door.  Lyrically it’s the Beatles so I’m not going to pick holes in it but when Suggs sings this line ‘Please don’t wake me, No, don’t shake me, leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping’ I start to imagine him singing this to me from a roadside ditch in minus temperatures dressed in summer attire, this makes me smile.
The video is standard Madness/Suggs bollocks with that quim taking every opportunity to mug to the camera in a comedic and arch manner. What an enigma, is he basically sharing a knowing wink with the viewers at the absurdity of it all? Actually who cares, he’s an annoying spunkrag. There’s bits of him being literal about the lyrics like a 12 year old with learning difficulties giving a dance recital and some other shit with people playing instruments in a wardrobe or acting like Stag Beetles who’ve been flipped onto their backs. At best it’s an incoherent mess.
As this may have given a new generation an interest in the Beatles I’ll give it a mark, but basically he can Sugg my bloodpumper – 1/10

Vince
After their breakup in 1986, Madness never really went away. Thanks to their quirky, witty videos and quality, well-crafted quintessentially English pop music they were fixtures on the radio and TV in the following years that made up my adolescence. In 1992 their Madstock concert caused an earthquake, they sold a few watches too. But unfortunately, Unlike their Britreggae peers UB40, Madness missed out on the Neggae payday – having to wait a few years for their return to the top 10 with the excellent Lovestruck. Wise old Suggs went out on his own though, and at the tail end of Neggae bagged several top 40 hits, thus keeping his profile high and securing the gig as host on the phenomenal Channel 5 Karaoke show Night Fever. Will Mellor and Barry form Eastenders joined him.
The summer of 1995 I completed my GCSEs and rather opened my mind to many new musical avenues. A combination of a heatwave, solid underage pub drinking, full time employment and hash cakes resulted in my exposure to more music, and more music magazines. I grew out of my brief Rave fascination, and although traditionally a fan of black music, delved deeper into the Britpop sounds that dominated the radio.
I started reading Q and learnt about the Beatles periods that weren’t moptop or Pepper. At the same time, my pal Dom Payne unearthed his Mum’s pristine Beatles LPs. She was a Beatlemaniac from the start but found their post-Pepper output ‘a bit weird’ so that’s where the LPs stopped. We did however gorge on Rubber Soul and Revolver that summer round his – the swirling, eclectic sounds were perfect fodder for young fertile minds that were open to any form of stimulation.
From then on I was a confirmed Beatles nut. I did what any teenager in his right mind would do in the 90s to get the rest of their output: I took out the offer with the Britannia music club to receive 5 free cassettes for the price of one in the post. And then spent the next two years getting sent stuff I didn’t want.
So, when Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson took on Lennon’s Psychedelic, Somnambulant gem I’m Only Sleeping and turned it into a jaunty Neggae workout – I took it as a personal affront. It felt disrespectful, cheap almost. All those wonderful sounds and textures flattened out, reducing this country’s two greatest musicians to a CJ Lewisesque romp. I absolutely hated it.
Time has tempered my feelings towards it somewhat, and I can see that it is not without its charms. The BigBeat style drum breaks are well produced, and the riddim overall snaps quite nicely. A quick glance on Discogs revelas that Sly and Robbie put it together – and you can tell. I also like the fact that Suggs retained the services of Monsieur Barso and Chas from Madness, enabling I’m sure the full reunion proper a few years down the line. I like theEnnio Morricone inspired keyboard whistle noise, a reference surely the ScandiNegg classic All That She Wants by Ace of Base. I also can’t deny that the trombone replacing George Harrison’s backwards guitar works well.
BUT… He loses points for stretching the song out for another minute. Thinks he’s better than the Beatles does he? He loses another point for the freakydeaky video. Started off like an advert for Kellogs Fruit’n’Fibre but then quickly morphed into Lullaby by the Cure which as a child gave me nightmares. Thanks for dredging all that up Suggs. This song was pitched as a double A-Side, with Off on Holiday bringing up the rear. Where I come from, a double A-side suggests two songs of such high quality that the artist can’t choose which should lead. If this were true, and Suggs really felt Off on Holiday was Number One material, he would have spent more that £50 on the video. Atrocious.
NB.
When Q did Cash for Questions (readers received a tenner if their submitted question gets asked) with Suggs a few years back, I pitched in with this:
“You had a top 10 hit with I’m only Sleeping in 1995. Have you thought about doing a full on Nineties Reggae version of Revolver from start to finish? I’ve done the artwork for you to get you started.”

Front cover:

Back Cover:

Note, this was before the EasyStar Allstars started doing reggae versions of entire LPs such as Dub Side of The Moon and Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band. Suggs would have been well ahead of the curve. But, in the words of John and Paul, I received ‘No Reply’.
Score: A surprisingly high 6/10 for me

NEGGAE SCORE: 3.7

Ali Campbell – Let Your Yeah Be Yeah

James BC
After fifteen-plus years operating as a close-knit unit, a member of UB40 branches out with a solo side project. We’ve all enjoyed the blend, now it’s time for the single malt: what game-changing statement will the collective’s vocalist make, now that he’s been afforded the opportunity to share his unique musical vision with the world?
Imagine my disappointment to find that Ali Campbell freed from the shackles of UB40 sounds like… Ali Campbell in UB40. Except exactly one eighth as good, and the pleasing mathematical symmetry of this fact in no way makes up for the listening ordeal I have just been subjected to. Ali commits all the crimes against music that UB40 get accused of:
– cover version
– Casio preset production
– overly sentimental
– yet somehow with all the feeling sucked out at the same time
– coffee table version of reggae that a real rude boy would run 100m in 9.76 seconds to get away from
– sung by Ali Campbell

I will defend UB40 against these charges until the cows come, but when it’s just Ali on his own, and when he turns in cobblers like this, a house full of cattle is not a price worth paying and I am firmly on the side of the prosecution.
Where did it all go wrong?
To start with, the choice of song is poor. When Jimmy Cliff wrote this in the early 70s, reggae songs tended to start fading out after two and a half minutes. It was fine in that context but when padded out to a length suitable for 90s radio it wears as thin as Birmingham’s claims that its canal system makes it the English Venice. I don’t buy the argument, either, that UB40 had used up all the decent reggae hits already. Labour of Love III came out a few years later and was the best Labour of Love yet, so I’m afraid this is simply Ali C being a div.
Secondly, the production is what detractors call UB40 by numbers. Normally I have no problem with UB40 by numbers, but here the numbers are all wrong. The tempo is too slow, there are the wrong number of UB40 members (1 instead of 8) and in particular the horns seem way off – where real-UB40 horns can be rousing (Present Arms) or joyful (Can’t Help Falling) or soothing (Bring Me Your Cup) or spooky (Food For Thought), these fake-UB40 horns trailblaze new territory deep into the lost continent of Annoying. Ali’s voice ends up having to carry the whole thing and, with the best will in the world and coming from a UB40 fan, in this case it’s not up to the job.
It’s as if Ali believed all the haters who were saying that what UB40 do is easy: take an old hit, press the UB40 button and storm the top ten. He’s tried to do exactly that and in doing so, proved that the nay-sayers are wrong and there’s actually a lot more to the Yowbs than appearances suggest. His band comes out of it well, then, but this is almost as huge a misstep for the man himself as the shirt he’s got on in the video.
Score: 3 out of 10.

Gouldy
This week’s entry is Ali Campbell going solo and covering the Jimmy Cliff classic ‘Let your yeah be yeah’, the title was taken from Matthew 5:37 and ranks number 2 on my list of songs that take their titles from bible verses, number one is ‘A bitch iz a bitch’ by NWA from Eazy 4:19. This song had been previously covered by The Pioneers in 1971, achieving a chart position of number 5 and therein lies my problem with the Ali C version.  We start with a horn intro but I’m not sure it’s really neg horns as it sounds more like some incidental music from a seventies sit-com, probably a racist one and would be used when the token black character messes up, ‘you’ve done it again Chalky!’ *horn intro*. The beat kicks in and it’s a classic bit of yowbs production with an electronic piano, horns,  standard bass and like a Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross radio show has the odd bit of sax thrown in for good measure.
Ali Campbell’s vocals are decent as ever, he’s not really pushing the boat out but it’s a professional performance. Overall it’s a bit of a plodder, the tempo is slower than the original or previous cover version, the vocals are fine but not groundbreaking, it’s almost like Ali’s got another tax bill to pay and has churned this out to make some dosh.
The lyrics are a warning to people to be truthful with Ali, a little hypocritical given his dealings with the HMRC, as he can now see through it all and has no trust in them whatsoever and basic ally he holds no truck with heir Walter Mitty like existence.  I really wish my Dad had played this to me when I was a teenager, it would have saved numerous exchanges like this;

Dad comes into room, it stinks of smoke.
‘Have you been smoking Jamie?’
‘No Dad’
‘What’s that smell?’
‘What smell?’ – Desperately hoping the slightly open window combined with lynx and the stench of teenage sexual desperation will cover things.

‘The smell of smoke, cigarette smoke’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’
Noticing there seems to be a fire under the bed he pulls out a mug with a still lit cigarette in there – ‘What’s this?’
‘Where has that come from?’ etc, etc. Painful.

The video seems to be based on a Stu-stu-studioline advert with Ali sitting in box designed by the same person who designs their packaging. It then cuts to an attractive blonde dressed in pvc, who looks like she’d be good fun for a night but don’t take it any further than that as she’ll have handcuffed to the radiator and be banging the postman in front of you whilst making derisive comments about your manhood and sexual prowess. Then we have one of those sliding picture puzzle games which annoyingly pop up on the ‘Nuts’ pub quiz picture round, it’s supposed to be a quiz game, not the ‘Crystal Maze’, fuck off. We cut to a wooden shelf covered in various trinkets which really reminds me of an album cover, I thought it was ‘Stanley Road’ but it’s not, so I’m deducting a point for annoyance factor.
We then have various people berking in and around the box, including the mental banshee doing her best ‘Robot Wars’ impression with a circular saw. Finally it becomes apparent why she’s a touch psychotic as she opens her mouth and reveals herself to be the daughter of Bond villain Jaws.
Score: Sorry Ali, this has been done better on two previous occasions and this version is a bit Butlins for me, so I score it 3/10

Norm
Hmm, Ali Campbell.
Initially when I saw this my heart sank and I grumbled a little under my breath at having to write another review about Ali or UB40. Then I snapped out of my funk, said to myself “How bad can it be?” So, I click away and start to “Let you yeah be yeah” unfold infront of me.
10 seconds in and I’m dizzy with all the colour and moving objects in the video. I persevere, watch on through squinted eyes trying desperately not to suffer an epileptic fit. I’ve been pretty harsh with Mr Campbell about his lack of creativity when it comes to his videos. I can only imagine what the production meeting were all about. So much for thinking outside the box, in fact, it appears that they though so far outside the box they ended up back inside the box. If you’re lost, I’m not surprised; I’m lost. Who exactly signed off on this? Who was the project manager? Someone had to watch this from start to finish and say, “Yep, that’s it guys, we nailed it. Well done.” Probably the same nonce that said all his other videos were quality. I dunno, it may be my anti-UB40/Ali side of me coming out again but I can’t help it.
The song starts off as most of his do, slow. Horns, Ali’s raspy vocals follow. Same sh!t, different song. This one never gets out of first gear, chugs along a woefully slow pace and has me bored to tears 30 seconds in. Music is supposed to be good for your soul, inspiring, energizing, uplifting et cetera. This is the opposite. My head is going to break if I have to listen to another verse by this guy. In fact as I’ve just spent the last half an hour listening to this the weather has changed with my mood. It was nice and sunny out, now it’s dark, cloudy and pissing down. Thanks Ali, you have not only ruined my ears with your monotone voice, you’ve hurt my eyes from that god awful video and to top it off you’ve ruined the weather as well. Great.
Score: In summary, poor effort, almost impossible to watch without feeling queasy. I can’t give this one more than 1/10. Time to step aside Ali.

Jonny
I don’t seem to have learnt my lesson as I have not prepared well enough for the deadline again this week having only listened to the tune late last night. However to demonstrate my dedication to the cause and to my fellow neg elders I have made an intervention and am writing this review whilst I am in a meeting at work. So I have half of my mind on neg and the other half on the UK consumer buyer behaviours and patterns of feminine protection products. In that context somebody has just used the term ‘heavy flow’ which I am pretty sure won’t help me sleep tonight.
Let’s cut right to the chase here.
The song is pretty average, but the trademark Ali delivery goes a long way to make up for it and limit the damage. The tune seems to go round and round a little with poor development. However Ali sounds great and again shows us why the UBs were such a force through the 90’s. I also like the subtle and non over powering horn section in this, which is probably the best part of the production. Hold on! Somebody is just asking me a question about the additional manufacturing costs to make the wings bigger. I have no idea as I have not been listening for the last 5 minutes. I just said a quid a pad which nobody seems to have questioned. Looks like I got away with it, nice one, back to Neg.
The lyrics are pretty nursery rhymeish and I’m not entirely sure what he’s going on about? It seems as if he just needs his Mrs to talk straight to him, stop giving mixed messages and stop talking in riddles like Dungeon Master. Not sure he’s going to solve that never ending dilemma, but fair play to him for giving it try. Would have been nice if he had a follow up to this song outlining if he ever succeeded and if so exactly how. I am sure a few blokes out there could do with some similar help. The video does not initially seem like much however in hindsight I imagine was pretty breakthrough that leveraged nicely some new PC video editing software. It may have been the first of its kind to use the mixed perception of sizes and shapes of multicoloured cubes that clearly helped artists in the future, no one more so than Jamiroquai who if I remember correctly loved that sort of stuff.
Holy shit!
Just listening to the summary and wrap up of the meeting and the quid I quoted seems to be the financial backbone of a new product launch to have a triple winged maxi pad delivering significant incremental sales!
The team are all basking in the glory of this plan and see it as the biggest thing since digital application, so much so that the guy at the other end of the conference table has a pad stuck to his forehead with the word WINNER scribed on it and the one next to me is leaning back in his chair smoking a tampon as if it were a mock cigar!
Further to this I also seem to be getting the credit for it. Look out folks this might be hitting shelves near you soon if my estimate was accurate. However I am pretty sure it wasn’t in which case I am going to have to find somebody else to blame the failure of the project on.
Marketing! Going to spend the rest of the day trying to blame Marketing, bastards only colour shit in all day anyway!
Score: 6/10 over and out till next week.

Vince
So Ali Campbell conforms to the egotistical traits espoused by many a lead singer. Leaving his brothers-in-arms with their proverbial dicks in their hands, he went off to make a pretty woeful solo album, with this mehdiocre cover of and old Jimmy Cliff tune one of the singles.
The production is SO UB40ish that it’s hard to see why Ali felt the need to do it. I mean, I wasn’t expecting lo-fi indie shoegazing, but I can’t imagine Astro, Robin and the boys were that impressed. It does have one redeeming feature; a beautiful sub-bass moog line that I wasn’t expecting. But that’s it.
The video has a nice, Brooklands College Graphics A-level feel to it. Jigsaws, sliding puzzles, printers tray, ripped paper lines, toy cars. I pretty much used all of these techniques in gaining my A-level ‘C’ grade around this time. Should have got a job making pop videos clearly.
Must have been something in the Pop legend water supply, because the video is VERY similar to Paul Weller’s Changingman released a few months earlier. But whereas Weller visually references 60s PopArt and Peter Blake, Ali Campbell has loftier ambitions by telegraphing Modernist pioneer Piet Mondrian.

And that people, shows you what happens if you fail the secondary subject in your combined honours degree and have to do History of Art for a year. Just glad it finally came in useful.
Score: 5 out of 10 (and 2 of those are for the video)

NEGGAE SCORE: 3.6

Shaggy ft Rayvon – In the Summertime

Release Date: July 95
Chart Position: 5

Gouldy
In the words of Donovan, ‘The area of Surrey was a County, Which lay before the great flood, In the area we now call the Thames’, basically I’m on a bit of a downer as it’s been raining for 3 months non-stop. This has resulted in me playing football once this year and has meant I’ve spent my weekends doing DIY, which I’m terrible at, although with the amount of practice I’m getting I should be able to knock up an Ark in the next month. Fortunately this week’s entry is shining sunshine into my life as the negfather Shaggy returns with a cover of the Mungo Jerry classic ‘In the Summertime’ and is ably supported by the puntastically named Rayvon (shame on you Peter Kaye, you chubby plagiarising Boltonite). As an interesting side-note Rayvon went on to have solo success with his own CBBC series which was basically an updated ‘Knightmare’.
We start off with a typical bit of bombast from Shaggy with his trademark cry of ‘SHAGGY HAH, oh and that ray bloke as well’ with the production being pretty faithful to the original version just with some added Neg beats. The most distinctive timbre in Neggae compliment Rayvon’s soulful vocals perfectly and the combination of Mungo Jerry and Neg is a great Anglo-Jamaican fusion which paved the way for greats such as Gin and Lilt and ‘Death in Paradise’.*

*Gone downhill a bit since Ben Miller was replaced by that goon from ‘My Family’ and BT ads.

Lyrically it’s the usual Neg story of ‘Sun’s out, got my American sportswear on, time to go and bag a raving sort’. Not overly sure about ‘If her daddy’s rich take her out for a meal, if her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel’, seems to be condoning raping people based on the amount of money they have, did George Osborne write this song? I can see it now, him, BOJO and Dave the rave cooking up bare lyrics under the influence of Taittinger and bugle on a Bullingdon beano. Shaggy then gives a warning of the risk of too much free love, STDs, she might be sweet like honey but if you’re not careful your japs eye will be stinging like a bee, pretty sure that’s what he means anyway.
The video pretty much adheres to the B formula of neg videos;

• Birds;
• Beach;
• Blue Sky;
• Big House;
• Bogling;
• Bad Boys;
• Bloke rollerskating.

Like the song there’s nothing original about it but that doesn’t matter as it looks like a good laugh and is certainly getting rid of my SADS.
The sun has come out since I’ve been playing this, Spurs won convincingly last night, even Vince making up a meeting so I have to come into the office and haven’t wanked worked from home is failing to dampen my spirits – 7/10

James BC
Let’s start with the best bit: the video. If want to know what should be in a neggae video, this one sums it up. Sun, sea, the beach, a big white house,
Shaggy looking dapper in braces, Shaggy looking casual in a T-shirt, Rayvon flashing a nipple in the car, lots of lovely ladies and handsome men dancing about and having a good time. A few local characters doing their thing. Rayvon’s hat.
If, like me, you’re a fan of pairs of men doing formation dance moves, you’ll particularly enjoy this one. 2000s hip hop was brilliant for this – think Puff Daddy and Usher in the I Need A Girl vid, or Nelly and Akon in Body On Me – but once again we find that neggae blazed the trail for everyone else to follow.
As for the song, it ticks all the boxes without doing anything especially spectacular. It’s not fireworks – or if it is, it’s one of those tins of assorted small ones designed for back gardens. The groove chugs along nicely, wisely conserving the ‘ch, ch-ch’ noises from the original. The vocals are pretty good, and Shaggy’s winning personality can’t help but come through and raise a smile. But it ends up being a bit repetitive, giving the feeling of going round and round like you’re trapped in a one way system – haven’t we had that verse before? Yes, and I definitely remember that chorus… we’re lost! Should we ask for directions? No, it’s fine, the song’s finished and Supercat’s coming on. Good.
Score: 6 out of 10. Fine on a compilation but not one of the artist or genre’s shining lights.

Norm
Shaggy, it’s been a while mate. Good to have you back on the Hot 90 with this Malibu worthy stunner! This tropical beauty starts off nicely with a rustic drum intro then unloads quickly with some island beats. If there was any question about who was responsible for this one, that was answered 6 seconds in when Shaggy announces that “It’s a summer time affair, Shaggy, HA, Rayvon!” Boom, here we are, head bobbing and dancing right from the off. Shaggy’s unique, sub-baritone voice delivers the lyrics in typical Shaggy fashion and is complimented by Rayvon’s light hearted vocals. These two have similar chemistry to Chaka Demus and Pliers in my opinion, simply a joy to listen to. As Shaggy pick up in pace, the word seem to roll of his tongue with ease. Oh, by the way, it’s not that easy. I’ve been trying to sing along to Shaggy for decades now and can’t get anywhere near. Maybe it’s my West Byfleet accent that doesn’t lend itself to copying one of Neggae’s superstars. On to the video. Brilliant, absolutely worth a watch. It keeps you entertained from start to finish. Again, this has all the ingredients for a successful Neg video. Sun, women, open top jeep/buggy packed with people, beach scenes and a mansion with Shaggy looking suave, a la Don Johnson in Miami Vice. In conclusion, I’ve really enjoyed this one. Whether you have the video or not, it doesn’t matter. This song will put you in a good place on it’s own. Trust me, it’s now snowing here in Va Beach for the third time in 3 weeks and I’m drifting away to happier, sunnier places. And that happier, sunny place has me on a beach, sipping my Malibu giving this beauty a whopping 9.5/10! Thanks Shaggy for making my day and briefly ending this polar vortex the east coast of the USA is stuck in.

Jonny
Mungo Jerry’s all time classic has been covered more times than the noon deadline has been missed, but very few covers will stand up to Shaggy’s epic rendition turning it into a neg masterpiece. The original is great but when you add Shaggy waxing lyrical with his gruff delivery over the top it takes it to a new level that is hard not to appreciate. Very few tunes sum up neggae quite so well as this and very few tracks make you feel as happy as this when it comes on the radio, or when played on loop repeatedly when chilling out drinking tropical fruit punch in the garden. Following drink driving lobbyist protests Shaggy has quite shrewdly played with the lyrics a little to ensure it does not cause offence and make it more commercially acceptable for the 90’s. But apart from that he has left the heart and soul of the track intact. We can however forgive the Mungo’s for this as I think drink driving was big in early 1970’s Britain with cars being designed to be less sensitive to booze than they are today. They should bring those designs back, they might have guzzled a bit more fuel but look at the bigger picture people! My favourite bit is when Shaggy recommends that if your new girlfriends dad is quite wealthy, you should wine and dine her, but if not do what every you want. Just take her to Spoons or something? Who cares, she is fair game! This instantly makes you feel good and there are only a handful of tracks that you can really say that about, it is almost as if nothing else matters and for 3mins 44secs everything is cool. Maybe if James Prest had listened to this Sunday morning a few times it would have helped him out a bit? The video is up there with some of the best video footage we have reviewed to date. It is not that original, but just does the basics so well. Chicks, beaches, summer house, pool and lilo action, it’s all there in all its glory for you to enjoy. Unfortunately however the reality is that the song does in fact have to end after those magical almost 4mins and I still have 4 angry elders that are pissed at me for not doing my review on time. Think I’m going to play this on loop over and over again until they forget about it, which I don’t think will be long. They are not normally the sorts to hold grudges and make a meal of things. Well done Shaggy 10/10!

Vince
The Impact of the Anomalous Weather of 1995 on the U.K. Economy – And how Shaggy and Rayvon benefitted from it.
The summers of ’94 and ’95 are noted as some of the sunniest on record. 1995 in London in particular – no rain for both July and August. If I wasn’t working on a fruit and veg stall (awaiting my GCSE results)  – I was spending money on :

• Chips at Guildford Lido
• Kronenbourg at The Litten Tree in Woking (RIP)
• Neggae vinyl at HMV in Guildford
• Tartan Trousers at Bluebird Garage  Kings Road

The whole country went a bit bonkers basically. “It’s hot and sunny, earn money then spend it on something” was the national mantra. And with that Shaggy and Rayvon took this pile of pooclaart to number 5. What were we thinking?
Perhaps it’s because I’ve never been a fan of the Mungo Jerry DUI anthem; that deep south banjo Great Gatsby vibe just doesn’t rock my boat. Never has. No amount of Neggaefying is going to rectify it unfortunately.
Shaggy and Rayvon give it a go, but their toaster-singer combo just comes off as a poor man’s Chakademus and Pliers. Ropey lyrics, half-arsed delivery. It all sounds rather distracted, like it was recorded in 90˚ heat with 100 tidy birds in thongs gyrating nearby.
Great video mind.
Score: Come on Shaggy you can do better than this (what’s that? He will do in the next few Neggae entries? Oh good.) 6/10.

NEGGAE SCORE: 7.7

Diana King – Shy Guy

Bad Boys video:

Original video:

Release Date: Jul 95
Chart Position: 2

Vince
“I don’t want no Fly Guy, I just want a shy guy, that’s what I want yeah, you know what I want yeah.”

You and me both Diana. You see, I work in xml publishing, and generally have a Fergie-like recruitment record. I have a knack of spotting good graduate coders that I know will enjoy the thrill of delivering valid, well-formed xml on time and to the needs of the product. Unfortunately once I took a punt on a ‘fly guy’ – a young chap that appeared to enjoy enjoying himself as much as I do. He didn’t last. So these days, like Diana, I like my guys as shy as possible.
What a tune though. The opening acapella vox calls to mind Brownstone’s If you love me or the Acapella remix of Soul II Soul’s Back To Life. You’d be forgiven for assuming this is a standard New Jack Swing, sorry R’nB (its 1995 not 1992) tune. It’s even got that HUGE New Jack Swing guitar sample that I should know but I don’t so please answers in a tweet to @Modernings if anyone knows it.

The break drops, BUT HOLD ON! The riddim is placed square in the 2 and 4 beat. This is Neggae plain and simple. Diana’s half-patois-half-US-soul-chanteuse shtick is beautiful. Clearly an antecedent to Welwyn Garden City’s very own Alesha Anjanette Dixon. Diana King has clearly a cracking set of lungs on her and delivers the song with aplomb. We’ve seen some swingbeat-Neggae abominations on this chart but this isn’t one of them.
Score: I  ♥ DK. 8/10.

Norm
What a beauty, we’ve had a pretty good run of late with Supercat, Marley and now a stellar effort from the talented Ms King.
What I really like about this is the video. The exact opposite of UB40, Dawn Penn, some Bitty and some that couldn’t even be bothered to make a video to compliment their offerings. As you can see, no expense was spared by Diana and her producers. We are treated to Will Smith and Martin Lawrence berking around, having a dance off that would be fit for the JazzMine’s fag ashed, Kronenbourg drenched dance floor. Then as the song progresses, we are treated to a Hollywood film of sorts condensed into 4m21s. Action packed from start to finish, everything we need:

• Guns
• Fire
• Police helicopters
• Main character running open shirted with gun
• Fast cars on runway with plane about to take off (high speed chase of sorts)
• Mike Lowery jumping on a taxi
• Bad guy doing a Klinsmannesque headfirst dive on the mens room floor, skidding past some urinals
• Exploding buildings

Needless to say, I was impressed with Diana’s planning and execution of this visual treat to go along with a stunning vocal performance.
Onto the song.
It starts strong, great pace and has me head bobbing from the beginning. I was put into a groove straight away, a good groove, a fun groove, a non-UB40 groove. Her island stylee voice is a treat, clear and crisp delivery, JA tones that are easily deciphered throughout this joyous voyage of Neg. Her voice ranks up there with anyone I’ve listened to. So smooth that you need to listen to this in the sun, kicking back, feet up with a Malibu and Lilt on a beautiful beach in Jamaica or Litten Tree beer garden/car park which was my alternative.
So, how do we score this ‘un? I thoroughly enjoyed this Bad Boy (pun intended) from start to finish. I was entertained mainly by Diana’s sweet vocals, excellent rhythm and pace of this tune. The videos was a plus.
Score: Put me down for a 8.5/10

James BC
I seem to have joined the neggae blog in a bit of a slow patch. The last top ten hit was Here Comes The Hotstepper from January ’95 and it’s taken until now, six months later in neggae time, to reach another one. What’s more, both these songs had a film soundtrack connection, strongly suggesting that the public lust for skank was in a slump: songs that would have been number 1 for a month in 1993-94 needed a Hollywood push just to go top five a year later.
All that is irrelevant when it comes to Shy Guy, though, because it would have been a smash hit in any era. It is an immense pop song that once listened to will be in your head for days – whenever one bit stops buzzing round your brain another will pop in to replace it. The number of hooks is outrageous: the verses, bridge, chorus and middle 8 could each carry a track in their own right.
(If you’re watching on Youtube, make sure you find the original video rather than the Bad Boys one or you’ll miss out on the “Shy man I wanna hear you” bit, one of many highlights. Instead you’ll get a weirdly empty instrumental section and a lot of clips of comedians reaching for pixellated-out guns.)
However, despite the hatstand full of hooks and a pioneering vocal performance that switches effortlessly between patois toasting and RnB singing like a proto-Lauryn Hill, I find that I like Shy Guy rather than love it – I respect it, but I can’t embrace it like I do the true neggae classics. It’s very much an American take on the form, its production a little too smooth and stringy, its lack of brass potentially fatal. It’s the Man City of neggae: the quality is undeniable but its success seems like such a forgone conclusion that I can’t get completely excited about it.
Score: A solid 8 out of 10, but for me it lacks the bit magic needed to go higher.

Jonny
I actually find myself having little time for the bling neg/jazz affair and the inclusion of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in this Diana King effort ironically entitled Shy Guy is a little laughable. I don’t find it does much for the movement but only dilutes the credibility of reggae through this important era. I find it pretty non-offensive and perfectly acceptable as background tunage, but further than that would not and still don’t pay much attention to it vs. the rest of the hot list.
I find it a real bandwagon effort to leverage the commercial success of Bad Boys and why we need a further advertisement of Will and Martin is beyond me? It’s got all the elements to a good track, it peaks and troughs, builds throughout and has some pretty strong delivery from Diana King, but I find it all too soulless to find it appealing. The real knife to the gullet is then the trade mark Will and Martin jokey dancing including classics such as stirring the pot and the running man. Genius!
I think she did a version of Stir It Up for Cool Runnings which implies to me that at the beginning of her career she did little more but hang around studios sniffing out potential soundtracks, actually pretty smart from a business perspective, but loses credibility as an artist in my book.
Score: I hope I cheer up and don’t kill myself today – 4/10 from me.

Gouldy
This week’s offering is from Diana King, who’s something of pioneer in the Jamaican music scene by being openly gay, not sure what Shabba Ranks made of it? I get the impression it was only men he objected to although his religious justification is sound, I’m sure we all know John 3:17 ‘and thou shall make countless records boasting of sexual prowess’, but props to Diana for coming out you brave, beautiful, beanflicker you.
I’m sure neggae elders of the past would argue this is more RnB than Neggae but I think the fact there is Steel Drums and a skanking bass put it firmly in the church of Neg. The intro is a nice neg/hip hop crossover sampling the Average White Bands ‘Schoolboy Crush’ (A hip hop staple since being used by Eric B and Rakim) with a skanking beat. Diana then kicks in with the vocals which carry on the hip hop links as they were previously used by N.W.A (interestingly the same acronym is used by the Crystal Palace hooligan firm – Nigels With Axes). Throughout the song Diana demonstrates her impressive vocal flexibility by switching between toasting and more conventional RnB stylings, backed by the tight production of Andy Marvel it’s a heady combination of New York and Kingston riddims. Lyrically the jist of the song is that Diana is fed up of being pursued by Alpha male types and all they do is give it the big I am and can’t be trusted. She’s after a Wolowitz basically, someone who’s going to treat her right and not mess her about. Of course we know now that this isn’t strictly true but in the crazy world of pop anything goes, Freddie Mercury sang of his lust for Fat bottomed Girls whilst Elton John asked Kiki Dee not to break his heart and then got married to a woman, Rupaul!
The video includes scenes of the film this was on the original soundtrack for, the ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ spin off ‘Bad Boys’ which followed the exploits of Will and Carlton after they left college and joined the police. Going by the clips from the film it seems a policeman’s lot in Miami isn’t a bad one at all, sports cars, helicopters, nightclubs, women and blowtorches. I don’t remember Reg Hollis in ‘The Bill’’ getting any of these perks, mind you Reg Hollis was a little bit suspect. As this is a Fresh Prince spin off there’s the obligatory shots of Carlton and Will dancing interspersed with Diana in front of some of her biggest fans. The end of the video is classic Carlton as he and Will walk off the set and he can’t resist a bit of stupid dancing, the only real disappointment is there’s no footage of Uncle Phil throwing Jazzy Jeff out the front door.
Score: Overall this scores a regal 8/10 from me.

NEGGAE SCORE: 7.3

Bitty Mclean – We’ve Only Just Begun

Release Date: June 95
Chart Position: 23

James BC
Here’s the 28th Bitty McLean song of the neggae story and it’s yet another cover, once again pillaged from your mum, dad or gran’s easy listening box. Not a promising prospect, and one that I was fully expecting to be irked by, but then Bitty’s sweet, sweet voice came in and all was forgiven. If I’m Homer Simpson, Bitty’s the world’s biggest hoagie – how can I stay mad at him?
Any worry that covering the Carpenters might be a step too far into cardigan territory turns out to be completely misplaced. In fact the song is perfectly suited to Bitty’s uncomplicated, amazed-by-the-world vocal style. It’s a fragile song in need of nurturing, so Bitty picks it up, gives it a hug and sends it off into your ears with a big grin on its musical face.
After a couple of weeks of more organic production, we’re now back to the UB40-style digital neggae sound. I don’t mind that – it keeps the song bouncing along and gives plenty of space for the warm, radiant sounds of the horns and Bitty’s voice. The strings might be a tad too much, but there are enough horns to drown them out at the key moments. An unusual touch, giving a nice school concert flavour, is the prominent triangle all the way through. In my imagination that’s played by the UBs’ percussionist Norman Hassan, who must have been looking for some extra work after his band switched over to drum machines in 1989.
Covering the Carpenters was actually all the rage in the mid-90s. The year before this came out there had been a tribute album featuring Sonic Youth, American Music Club and various other acts whose music you have no need to ever listen to – 90s equivalents of the Cold War Kids or Cherry Ghost. Their version of We’ve Only Just Begun, as interpreted by one Grant Lee Buffalo, doesn’t have a tenth of the zip of Bitty’s rendition, but it might explain the low chart placing of number 23 – were the public Carpentered out by this point? Or had Sonic Youth’s efforts given them some kind of Carpenters PTSD? Either way it seems Bitty wound up as collateral damage from this ill-conceived alt-rock vanity project as this is the last we’ll be seeing of him. If only Thurston Moore could have kept his mouth shut, Bitty might have fared better and been given the chance to put those glorious vocals on a few more tracks. What were you playing at, Thurston – he’d only just begun.
It’s pleasing, though, that Bitty’s last song is his best since It Keeps Raining. Thanks Bitty, and now as Pato Banton might say, bye Bitty bye bye bye bye, Bitty bye bye bye.
Score: 8 out of 10

Jonny
Crash bang wallop back to reality following the highs of last week! There I was thinking that this was getting better and we had hit another purple patch of neg busters only to be reminded of the guff that this movement regularly spat out. The fact that this Carpenters classic has been covered no fewer than 30 times by various unknown artists only highlights the lack of any creative thinking. A total non event by someone I had expected better from and someone who has contributed so much this list. He really has done nothing but put it through the neg blender on max setting! Its been pumped and negged up a little but nothing you wouldn’t find on a Casio pre set! The last entry on the list from Bitty I believe and what a roller coaster of highs and lows since It Keep Rainin. Actually I think it just went straight downhill from then hitting rock bottom with this smelly turd, such a shame.
1.5/10 – move along swiftly please.

Norm
Well, if we are going to follow Supercat with anything Neggish, it may as well be Bitty. It seems like he’s had an entry every other week or so. I’ll be honest with you guys, he’s starting to wear thin on me and I’m also running out of nice things to say about one of my favorite artists on the Hot 90. I’m not sure how many free passes I can slide his way. At some stage he needs to sort himself out and produce something worthwhile. Sadly, this isn’t the one and I’m left pining for more Supercat. “We’ve only just begun” has me wishing this one hadn’t even started. I’m in a Bitty time warp at the end of the first verse. I get the feeling that Bitty is just pumping out music just to pump out music. No real passion, no real enthusiasm, no umph. I get a strong whiff of UB40 with the background music and it is extremely unsettling. The more I listen to this song (eyes closed) I can see Ali Campbell and friends in some poor, low budget black and white video swaying side to side being as creative as West Ham and their 19th century style of football (according to the special one). If I haven’t said anything good about this song yet, it’s because I’m just not into it. Not even Bitty can cheer me up or even make me smile. The boring, monotonous tone from the outset never recovers my attention. No head bobbing, no Malibu and lilt. Even Gazza in the dentists chair would say this song is a pile of cack. As you can tell, my mind is wandering to some odd places. On that note, I’m off. Off to listen to my man Supercat. Put me down for 2/10 See ya later Delroy.

Vince
This is it then, the 7th and final entry for the Neggae Young Player of the Tournament, Delroy ‘Bitty’ Mclean. We shall miss his cheeky chappy demeanour, his meticulous production, and his sugarsweet vocals. And his bogling; never forget the bogling.
We’ve watched him develop and grow – and now he’s leaving. Actually this feels a bit like a final school report; with Bitty leaving the school of Neggae of to the big wide world of Reggae proper. Worth noting that, unlike the majority of artists on the Neggae Hot 90, Bitty is still gigging and performing currently. LOOK AT HIM AT THE JAZZ CAFE LAST YEAR!
Still got it. Hasn’t aged a day.
In my opinion, with We’ve Only Just Begin, Bitty graduates from Neggae Hill Comprehensive with a steady B grade. He’s delivered better coursework on the likes of ‘It’s Raining It’s Raining‘, but by sticking to the Neggae covers territory he’s comfortable with Bitty gives us a lovely rendition of the Carpenters mawkish original.
The production is ‘Another Bostin Creation’ – the Dolby recorded, metronomic digital Neggae we’ve come to expect from Bitty and his tutors UB40. But it’s not soulless – there’s are some lovely Hammond flourishes and the brass section is gawjus – no half-arsed sax solos on show here. And Bitty’s vocals once again absolutely shine.
As for the video, well I’m pretty sure MJ didn’t lose any sleep over it. It serves a purpose, using the moving-house-because-we’ve-just-begun metaphor to adequate purpose. It looks like Bitty has employed UB40 in their sideline Property Logistics Company – ‘Iriemovals’. And like clockwork, its 11am so Ali and the boys have popped to Greggs for a Bean and Sausage Slice and a strawberry milkshake. Knowing them, they’ll have preceded that with a massive cone too.
Bitty’s left alone with his lady, so while she concerns herself with the lack of progress, he calms her nerves via serenade. And d’you know what? He’s right to sing to her. He’s paid Astro and the lads to do the lift and shift – let them earn their money. Plus, she is a beautiful looking thing; graceful, with a gorgeous smile – and sporting a cracking pair of Sambas. Great old school trainers too.
Score: Farewell our Kid – solid 7 from me.

Gouldy

This week it’s Bitty’s final foray in the Neggae Hot 90 and sees him taking on the Carpenters, not the West Indian family from Eastenders which would have been apt, but the brother and sister duo Richard and ace food recycler Karen. We kick off with some standard Neggae production values of a horn section, Casio beats and synth strings. It’s a nice song but then doesn’t really go anywhere which unfortunately is the nature of the song. I’m not a fan of the original but unfortunately does Bitty’s neggae makeover improve it in any way? Not for me I’m afraid. Bitty’s vocals are as flawless as ever, throughout his canon of work his vocals have remained pretty flawless even when his song choice and production have been questionable. The video is based around Bitty and his good lady moving into a new house and although Bitty has unpacked his huge model aeroplane and Dynamo Dudley manager’s player of the year trophy this seems to be the extent of his contribution. Whilst his better half is getting down to the nitty gritty of unpacking Bitty’s just berking about, following her round the house doing an Easy Listening skank. This may seem charming initially but if Bitty’s not careful the novelty is soon going to wear off. Mrs Bitty comes home from a hard day at work to the walls unpainted AGAIN and Bitty bopping round the house.
‘Bitty you’ve had all day to paint the walls and you’ve not even started, what the hell have you been doing?’
‘Sorry, I was going to make a start but then some Andy Williams came on the radio and I just had to dance round the house to it’
This isn’t going to cut it Bitty, take it from a man who knows from bitter experience. You need to get down to ELA (Easy Listeners Anonymous) and get on the 5 point program before this spirals out of control and you find yourself single, friendless and in the gutter.
Score: So long Bitty, following your neggae career has been the equivalent of following Spurs, a bright start, fresh hope but ultimately a disappointing spiral into mediocrity. 5/10

NEGGAE SCORE: 4.7

Super Cat (Feat. Jack Radics) – My Girl Josephine

Release Date: May 95
Chart Position: 22

Vince
Well, this is an absolute joy. It’s a privilege to have Dancehall royalty such as SuperCat grace the Neggae Hot 90, and he does not let us down. My Girl Josephine skanks and crackles for 3m 43s of pop magic, and reinforces the very reason we do this every week. An old song I’d forgotten about has brought a little bit of joy into my life and I hope you enjoy it too.
For starters, Super Cat is one cool f*cker. I first became aware of him via one of the greatest mixes of all time, John Carter Live at the Social Volume 2. Every home should own a copy of this. SuperCat’s cut up vocals kick off the mix, sampled by Kenny Dope on opening track Supa. “Dada, now he’s a Super Cat man ah you a Don Dada” – These words have swirled around my head for days on end – the flat yet gravelly vocal style tough yet rhythmic. Like any DJ with borderline OCD I immediately snaflled up any Super Cat music I could find.
Super Cat, like Chakademus and Pliers, was a bonafied 80s Dancehall star. His production and credits lists on discogs read like a who’s who of the JA 80s scene, so it was inevitable that he would turn up at the Neggae party at some point. The fact that the crystalline production on My Girl Josephine was completed by Sly & Robbie should come as no surprise. It just sounds fantastic.
Filtered drum rolls, echoed toasting, tabla, huge horns section – I think this might be the greatest production on the Neggae hot 90. Everything sounds turned up to 11. Listen to My Girl Josephine, then go back and listen to Boom-Shak-a-lak. Makes the latter sound like a Stock Aitken and Waterman production frankly – and that’s no slight on Apache Indian by the way. This record is just too good.
Like Oh Carolina, Super Cat takes a big ole Fats Domino sample and makes something new out of it. Sampling Fats Domino was clearly a shoo-in for Neggae chart success, yet no-one thought of sampling Blueberry Hill – his most famous song. I’m just imaging Suggs toiling through it now actually. Probably best left alone.
Super Cat though. What a boy. Sounds like U-Roy, looks like Chris Kamara. And ably assisted by Jack Radics on the chorus, who if you recall from Twist and Shout was essentially a cross between Billy Preston and Baloo from the Jungle Book when he’s in disguise in an attempt to storm the monkey castle to save Mowgli:

He’s smartened up his act a little in this video though which is to be applauded.
Until this week’s review I’d forgotten all about this song. Upon first listen though, I was instantly transported back to the Student Union common room in Brooklands College in 1995. Whiling away the lunch playing 40p games of pool with Dom and Jonny, and trying to commandeer the jukebox with Britpop classics. In those days the battle for jukebox supremacy often involved running from class to the SU the second lunch break started, to load it up with a couple of quid to ensure the goths didn’t put crap like Ich Bin Ein Auslander on rotation.
Anyway, one day I was a bit slow off the mark, and some bloody girls had got there first. Josie Farnsworth and Phillipa Walker played 2 songs on rotation for the whole lunch hour – Waterfalls by TLC and My Girl Josephine (AKA ‘Josie’s song’). Waterfalls I could take or leave, but My Girl Josephine was just dandy. So thanks Josie, great choice (didn’t need to play it seven times in a row though.)
Score: a ten from me.

Norm
Super Cat, my man. After reading up on this fella, mucho respect to him. He grew up in the rough and ready Seaview Gardens neighborhood in Kingston (I know, sounds really tough, probably similar to West Byfleet if I had to guess), he is the older brother to Junior Cat and his nickname of “Wild Apache” was given to him by his friend and mentor Early B.
Early in his career he would DJ under the name of Cat-A-Rock and switch between that and Wild Apache until he settled for Super Cat. Anyway, his bio is fascinating, I love the names that they come up with and roll with. In my opinion, he nailed it with Super Cat.

So, onto the song. Another one that I really don’t remember all that well. I did a little double take when elder Vince posted the link on the communal Neggae message board. Super Cat? Nah, never heard of this guy. So, I click on the link, not knowing what to expect and I’m pleasantly surprised. This song compliments last week’s effort from Bob and has renewed my faith in sweet Neggae music. A stellar version of Fats Domino’s original. I love the intro, island toasting accompanied by horns and what appears to be some sort of snare, or not – I don’t know my instruments that well. I’ll defer to Vince for clarification on the light background drum type of noise. The big band style is a nice twist, something I was not expecting. Jack Radics and Super Cat really work well together. Sublime vocals to go with some fun and light-hearted lyrics. For me, it keeps you entertained and head bobbing from start to finish.
Score: I’m down with Super Cat. My Girl Josephine scores a very competitive 8/10. A nice treat and excellent addition to the Neggae Hot 90

Jonny
Did he shoot Nitty Gritty? Didn’t he? Was it a member of his band? Was he involved in someway or another? Who knows? There is a lot of circumstantial evidence to it, but nothing concrete. At the end of the day I am not that familiar with this Nitty Gritty character and all I know is that Super Cat has absolutely kicked the crap out of this version of Josephine and for that alone should be proved innocent of anything he has ever done. Anyone who cant take a Fats Domino’s track and add this level of top spin gets a massive ‘iree iree’ from me!
This is amazing and the only disappointment I have is that I don’t remember this tune at all. If I had heard to before I definitely would have remembered it as its is maybe my favourite track on the list so far. I know that is a massive call but I mean it. Its authentic dancehall sound makes you listen with intent as it drops in. Its got great rhythm and peaks and troughs nicely, all the time building and building getting better and better as the track goes on. This has real pedigree and you know from the beginning that the tune oozes class and demands respect. This is Head and Shoulders (trademark Procter&Gamble) above the other stuff we have been reviewing lately or dare I say since the beginning of the blog. I normally pick no bones about how sometimes I really find this process a chore and how Thursday nights/Friday mornings can often fill me with dread. But hearing this makes me really change my tune and turns it into a joy! This has brightened up my day. Yes we just got pumped at 5-a-side tonight, yes Knivo dodged his round in the pub again, but you know what? Who cares! I always lose at 5-a-side and Knivo never buys a round, life goes on and so will this track! I enjoyed every minute of it including the easy going video of them hanging around that dusty old town that has a certain amount if charm to it, I’d even like to visit it someday.
Score: A magical 10/10 from me!

Gouldy
This week we’ve got one of my favourite modern reggae artists with his only Hot 90 entry; Supercat enters the fray ably supported by neggae collaborator Jack Radics. Super first tasted global success after taking advice from his American cousin (MC Skat) and got involved with the burgeoning Commercial Hip Hop Scene (Chipshop) appearing on a remix of Jump by Kriss Kross, RIP Daddy Mack, I’m literally pouring a Fruit Shoot in your memory right now. He then had a few more biggish songs without really troubling the UK chart. Then, at Sophia Loren’s insistence, he was included on the soundtrack of neggae fashion film ‘Prêt a Porter’ with this Fats Domino cover which burst into the charts and peaked at number 22 around the time of my 20^th birthday, when the long summer days were mainly spent locked in a dark garage doing bongs until my Dad found my ‘hubbly bubbly pipe’ and clearly didn’t believe it was a prototype of water filtration tool designed to help 3^rd world communities.
The song starts with some top Neggae drum samples in a similar vein to ‘Carolina’ with a declaration of love to his girl Josephine. Then the horns kick in shortly followed by the beat and piano and we’re off basically, the song is chugging along like a six pack of mini Heinekens and you can’t help but tap your feet. The production doesn’t change up much throughout but it doesn’t need too as the producer has lovingly reworked the original and kept a Michael Carrick-like simplicity to the whole piece, unlike last week’s overegged pudding of a rework. Vocally the Cat/Radics combo is as sweet a combination as Shearer and Sheringham v Holland in Euro 96. Without this song I’d go as far as to say this new wave of the new wave of Neggae classic would never have come to light or Nu-Wop as I like to call it.
Lyrically it’s a the Cat Radics combo imploring childhood sweetheart Josephine to remember the good times they had together as innocent youths and follows up with attempts to woo her with their dead Grandad’s possessions which include a car, a helmet, some Cuban cigars and a pocket watch. I’m not sure this is really going to work unless Josephine is in fact Miguel Angel Jimenez but you’ve got to credit the effort. I also have visions of the handover from the Grandad being a Caribbean take on this. The song carries on in this vein and like a David Lynch film there’s no definitive ending and you’re left to draw your own conclusions, personally I think Josephine is in the Black Lodge with Laura Palmer and Agent Cooper.
The video is actually reasonably stylish for a neggae effort with Jack and Super dressed like Bugsy Malone characters. There’s an old bloke in a suit dancing about who’s a bit of a worry, he can’t seem to put his tongue in his mouth and looks like my cat when he’s thirsty, it could be the result of a stroke but he’s smiling so like the end of a massage in Goa it’s a happy stroke. The heroine of the piece is dressed demurely for a neggae video which is refreshingly lacking in misogyny preferring to concentrate on her sunny demeanour and friendly manner, don’t get me wrong though she’s still a right facking sort and given half a chance I’d be up it in a shot. The gist of the video is that Josephine walks round with a rhythmic swagger, like a Jamaican Rooty Tooty, which is infectious and spreads happiness wherever she goes. How charming and harks back to a more innocent time before Shabba was even a potential stain on his dad’s stomach.
Score: 8/10 – A shame this is Supercat’s only entry.

James BC
This is a delight. What we have here is good-time twelve-bar rock ‘n’ roll meets good-time Neggae uptown – possibly the sunniest genre combination imaginable. There’s nothing complicated about it at all: Twist and Shout show-stealer Jack Radics and relative newcomer Supercat pass the mic back and forth over a bouncy Bitty McLean-style groove. Then again there’s no need for fancy stuff when you’ve already got everything you could want – a strong chorus (a Fats Domino cover, a quick poke about reveals), neg ‘n’ roll piano, industrious percussion and a neat horn break in the middle.
Compared to Twist and Shout this is a nicely controlled vocal from Mr Radics – he leaves the adlibs to his accomplice and only shows a hint of the raucousness he’s capable of, managing this time out not to sound like a complete maniac. Supercat has quite a polite deejaying style, which here is as simple and effective as the rest of the track. He might not be the quickest or the flashiest, but he scores big on charm – in fact I’d go so far as to say he’s a worthy successor to Fats Domino in that department.
It’s charm that makes this song: the whole package is just hugely likeable. Impossible to dance well to and impossible to sit still to, it would be guaranteed to unite any room, barbecue or major sports venue in joyous, terrible bopping. Sure it’s repetitive, but if that was a bad thing I wouldn’t have felt the need to keep replaying it as I’ve been writing – I’ve now played it seven or eight times and far from being bored, I’m enjoying myself nearly as much as the old geezer in the video.
I’d never heard this track before having to write about it, which just goes to show how rich the Neggae era was. The Shaggys and Shabbas may have grabbed the headlines but even the subs’ bench was packed with talent – much like the England squad at the time, when legends like Robbie Fowler or Ian Wright could barely get a game. Heady days.
Score: 9 out of 10

NEGGAE SCORE:  9