Dancehall Heroes of the 1990s: Buju Banton vs. Super Cat

This post comes to you courtesy of playoff hockey and high school nostalgia. It also come courtesy of my buddy Nemo Burbank who said he was going to start his own version of Music Video Violence, but all dancehall reggae. It would be pretty much the same as this blog, but make readers 400% more likely to commit hate crimes.

I first got into reggae in the fall of 1995. Sure, I liked reggae before then. I asked for the Bob Marley Collection on cassette for Christmas in Grade 7, and I remember digging what ever dancehall crossed over to whatever Top-40 station I was listening to at the time. I have very clear memories of listening to Chaka Demus and Pliers and Nadine Sutherland and Terror Fabulous on AM 640 -- does anyone else remember 640 before it was a news station? -- but reggae didn't become seriously become part of my environment until the fall of 1995.

The reason the date is so specific is that in the fall of 1995 I left my small K - 8 grade school where predominant ethic groups white and Canadian-born-Chinese for a large, windowless, concrete high school where the predominant ethnic groups were Caribbean-Canadians and Chinese kids from somewhere else, presumably China.

It immediately became clear to me that if reggae had been a rare, exotic additive to my old musical diet of mid-'90s alt rock and cheesy pop-dance, it was going to be a staple from now on whether I liked it or not. Reggae was everywhere. It rumbled out of cars in the parking lot, drifted down from the balconies of the highrises that backed onto the school and made up a solid 40% of every school dance. Some of the other white kids went on crazy anti-reggae rants fueled by equal parts racism and religious devotion to Trent Reznor, but I rode the reggae wave as much as possible.

Sure, I was still mostly listening to Epitaph punk and Sonic Unyon CanRock, but I found that reggae was a) easier to dance to and b) made girls more willing to make out with me than, say, Rancid. I still couldn't understand the lyrics most of the time, but I also couldn't always understand what my classmates were saying, so that wasn't a big deal.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Salt Lane, Kington, Jamaica, with a bad judgment call of militant homophobia and dissing dark skinned girls, BU-ju, BAN-ton!

Like almost all dancehall artists, Buju Banton started rhyming at a ridiculously young age. He inexplicably chose the moniker "Gargamel" for the early bit of his career, but later changed his stage name to Buju Banton. Buju for a childhood nickname, Banton as a tribute to early '80s dancehall chatter Burro Banton. Presumably he also got tired of being outsmarted by the Smurfs.

Buju had huge success in Jamaica in the early '90s. Unfortunately, he also made two huge mis-steps. The first was a song called "Boom Biddy Bye Bye," which basically advocated killing gay people. (He subsequently took it back, ish.) The second was a song called "Love Me Browning," where he got all internalized racism on everyone and expressed a strong preference for light skinned women. (He also took that back, sort of.)

In 1993, he started his North American career with a the album Voice of Jamaica. Voice of Jamaica showed Buju getting a little more conscious, rhyming about issues like AIDS and crime. In 1994 he converted to Rastafarianism and started making progressively rootsier, less-dancey records before going back to his club roots in 2003.

This is some vintage mid-'90s, pre-Rastafarianism, post-raw ignorance Buju. The song is "Deportees (Things Change)" off Voice of Jamaica. There are two really dope things about this video: 1) It has a bit of a plotline, as does the song, and 2) it has some absolutely killer examples of period urban wear.



Now the opposition.

In the blue corner, from Cockburn Pen, Kingston, Jamaica, with severe career mis-step of selling out and guesting on a Sugar Ray track, SUUU-PER CAT!

Super Cat is sort of a tragic figure. After spending the second half of the 1980s and the first half of the '90s as the man to beat in dancehall reggae, he found his popularity starting to fade. Rather than rush back to the studio start trying to kill it, he guested on a Sugar Ray song, made a shitload of fast money, shot his credibility and effectively ended his career.

Now, in Cat's defense, I'm being a little harsh. I'm just speculating here, but one has to think that he felt sort of entitled to Sugar Ray's filthy lucre. Him and Shabba Ranks worked their asses off to get dancehall on African-American radio stations. They got signed by major labels in the U.S. and guested on songs to help break the genre, only to see guys like Buju, Beenie Man and Bounty Killer, make the real money.

For those of you who don't know, Super Cat was the closest thing to a crossover superstar in the mid-to-early 1990s. He worked with a who's who of '90s hip-hop and R & B (Biggie and Puffy, Heavy D, Mary J. Blige, Kriss Kross, Method Man) and was the first guy to do hip-hop remixes of his songs for play on American radio. He had a song on New York Undercover. This guy broke down doors.

Ironically, Super Cat has had a bit of a comeback in the last little while, doing guest vocals for American rappers and R & B singers. It seems like the taint of "Fly" finally wore off enough for him to be credible again. He also released his first album in nine years back in 2004.

He's probably been helped by the fact that every crossover dancehall artist to come out in to past half-decade has named him as their number one influence. Damian Marley sounds like a rootsier Super Cat, Collie Buddz is a white Super Cat with a slower flow, and Sean Paul has just jacked his sound outright.

This is the video for "Scalp Dem" off The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and The Crazy, an album he co-produced with Junior Cat, Nicodemus, and Junior Demus. That's right folks, double your Cats, double your Demuses. This video is awesome. First of all, it highlights the odd obsession of early dancehall artists with Western movies. (Guys were using Josie Wales and Lee Van Cleef as stage names. Super Cat called himself the Wild Apache.) Second of all, it may set the record for the largest number of white people in a dancehall video.