Hello, and welcome to a new dispatch from The Rinse. We’re a couple of days late because I have been fighting a losing war with my health. I’m fine in the grand scheme of things, but a migraine and poor sleep combine to make the idea of writing about two monumental artists feel exceedingly more daunting than it already is. Hence, the delay.

So, as is my wont, February will focus only on Black musicians. They can be from anywhere in the diaspora, but they must be Black. This dispatch is actually a return to an aside that I made back when I wrote about Lizzy Mercier Descloux and Grace Jones:

With both it being Black History Month and the recent passing of Sly Dunbar on January 26th, the time was right to discuss him and his production partner, Robbie Shakespeare.

If you have, at best, a passing familiarity with reggae, I cannot impress upon you how important these two men are. The sound of modern reggae was shaped by them. Furthermore, they had a pivotal hand in the development of dancehall in Jamaica, and the music that they created on the island, particularly their work in the area of dub reggae, went on to inspire hip-hop in the United States and the sound of Jungle and Drum-n-Bass in England.

In addition to their work in helping to create the sound of modern reggae, Sly and Robbie collaborated with artists from all over the world, providing the riddims that they were best known for. Rather than giving you a long, blow-by-blow history of their recording history (they are on tens of thousands of recordings; I can feel your eyes glazing over at that prospect), I’m going to touch on a couple of key moments in their history and then point to a few albums that will give you a nice diversity of what they could do as session musicians and producers.

To go to the beginning of the story, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare both started as session musicians, playing in various studios around Kingston. Dunbar played in Bunny Lee’s band, the Aggrovators, and Shakespeare was playing in the Hippy Boys as well as doing some tour work for the Upsetters, Lee “Scratch” Perry’s house band. Although the two men knew of each other, they did not actually start working together until the Hoo Kim brothers recruited them in 1976 to play in the Revolutionaries, the house band at Channel One Studios.

Their work in this band fundamentally changed the sound of reggae. If you are familiar with the music of Bob Marley, you know what the “one drop” beat sounds like. In case it’s been a while, listen to this album version of “I Shot The Sheriff”:

This pattern was the standard for reggae music. In 1976, Dunbar introduced a faster pattern, called “rockers.” This became the new standard. Everyone used this new pattern, including Bob Marley. You can hear it on “Could You Be Loved”:

The immediate difference is the pace. While it is not going at anything near light speed, there is an increased urgency, with snare hits on the 2 and 4 and kick drum on the 1 and 3. The music, as a result, is considerably more lively and dynamic, providing more impetus for the bass as well as the guitar. If you want a further explanation of the pattern, please watch this drum training video that explains it quite well.

When you come out of the gate innovating an entire genre of music, you can only continue to go up, and that’s exactly what they did. Sly and Robbie, working at studios around Kingston as well as for their own label, Taxi, continued to play for reggae legends like Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, Yellowman, Black Uhuru, Gregory Isaacs, and Bunny Wailer, among many others. A number of these albums are considered to be landmarks of roots reggae by many, including myself.

In addition to their backing work, their dub tracks became highly coveted in dancehalls around the island. While I linked to an explanation of dub above, it might be better to explain it with an example. The following is “Kunta Kinte Dub,” a legendary track recorded by the Revolutionaries.

In comparison to a standard reggae track, the primary difference is the fact that the vocals are cut out of the track. The focus, instead, is placed on the drums and bass, with the other instruments used as accents. Furthermore, dub tracks standout due to their heavy use of delay and echo effects. These tracks accompanied by a person talking and/or singing over them, or toasting, is what morphed into hip-hop in the United States and led to the creation of dancehall in Jamaica.

When the “Sleng Teng” riddim appeared in 1985, many were worried about whether the studio band and dub tracks would be completely replaced by electronics. While they both eventually were, this did not really affect Sly and Robbie. They had seen the writing on the wall and adapted. Their 1987 album Rhythm Killers is proof of this. Although the music on the album is OK—it’s slightly clunky and not quite as interesting as the other things they were doing at the time—the album shows how the duo embraced the electronic production techniques of the time and continued to push Jamaican music forward. Although they continued to play drum and bass, their productions after this point did actively include more electronic elements, which helped them stay at the forefront of the dancehall scene.

Throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, Sly and Robbie continued to release music through Taxi, and they were working with diverse artists like Madonna, Joan Armatrading, Simply Red, and Bob Dylan, among many others. While they were continuing to make new music, the dub music that they had recorded in the 1970s and 1980s was taken by club kids in England and reworked. They sampled the riddims and toasting and sped it all up. The new music was called Jungle, and it took over Black Britain. An excellent example of the form is Remarc’s “Sound Murderer”:

So, if you are keeping track, Sly and Robbie completely changed the face of reggae, presaged the electronic innovations of dancehall, spread reggae sounds across the globe, and influenced the creation of Jungle and Drum-n-Bass in England. That’s a lot of shit to have done. As I noted earlier, going through all of their albums would lead to my institutionalization and your boredom. So, I’m only going to touch on a few important/interesting albums.

As I noted earlier, Sly Dunbar, in his work at Channel One Studios, created the rockers rhythm. This was the album that it introduced it to the larger reggae world. The Mighty Diamonds are a trio of smooth-singing gentlemen who spread a conscious message through their music. Their music spoke to the struggles that the average Jamaican faced on a day-to-day basis. Even with the changed beat, the music maintains the saunter that reggae is best known for. Aside from being a landmark for the rhythm, The Mighty Diamonds are soulful and in excellent harmony on these tracks, making this a worthwhile listen.

Sly and Robbie anchor and produce this album, which sits at the transition point between roots reggae and the upcoming digitization of reggae. The music still has the swing of roots, but Sly and Robbie add multiple touches of synth drums and synthesizers across the eight tracks that make up this album. These sounds accompany the excellent vocal performances of Michael Rose, Puma Jones, and Duckie Simpson. This album was extremely well received in 1981, and its importance remains strong 45 years later.

Sly and Robbie show how they have moved into the digital era of dancehall with this record. Although there are some weak tracks here, this album is influential for two reasons. The first is the “Murder She Wrote” riddim. Also known as the “Bam Bam” riddim, this has been used on hundreds of tracks since it was released in 1992. Given how much it has been used, there is a good chance that you know it even if you aren’t up on your reggae. The second is the combination of a gruff MC, Chaka Demus, with a sweet-sounding singer, Pliers. These two men were not initially connected; Sly and Robbie had the idea of putting the two of them together for this record. This was one of the first times that such a pairing occurred, and the result is fantastic. This format has been used in the genre many times since. You, in fact, know a song that uses this dynamic: “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy & RikRok.

An absolute curveball of an album. French pop legend Serge Gainsbourg decided that he wanted to make a reggae-influenced album, so he went to Jamaica, hired a bunch of hammers (Sly and Robbie included along with Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt, two of the best reggae singers of all time), and made this album. While the idea of Gainsbourg making this album is nonsense on paper, the result is great. Gainsbourg sounds good on the tracks, blending smoothly into the grooves being laid down. While this album is not indicative of all of his work, which has a much more Gallic feel, it is a phenomenal listen on its own terms.

As members of the Compass Point band, Sly and Robbie backed Grace Jones on her best album. The style that they perfected in roots reggae merged well with the avant-garde pop sensibilities of Jones. This was the album that truly solidified the image of Grace Jones in the popular imaginary: angular, sexual, sensual, and cool. A truly rad album.

So, with these five albums, I send you back into the world. If these grab your interest, there are hundreds of albums available for your perusal. A good place to look for more is on their label, Taxi. They made many compilations both of their artists and the music that was popular in the dancehalls at the time, so they serve as good jump-off points.

Next dispatch is going to be at the end of this week (hopefully with no delay), and it will be a primer on one of the all-time great groove artists: Fela Kuti. It’ll be fun to be reminded of his excellence.

As always, thank you for reading. Please tell a friend to subscribe. Take care of yourselves and each other. Pet your dog or cat or someone else’s dog or cat, as long as the animal is OK with it. And, always and forever, fuck ICE.