Tego! "Metele Salzon!" Dig it!
Showing posts with label reggae. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reggae. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
INTERNET OUT! Tego Calderon wins
Hey all,
My (stolen) Internet is down. Doing this from work.
Tego Calderon wins... victory video up shortly.
My (stolen) Internet is down. Doing this from work.
Tego Calderon wins... victory video up shortly.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I Hate Winter or The Reggaeton Battle: Tego Calderon vs. Calle 13
Hey all,
I feel like sort of a douche for not writing for a month, but I've a) been doing and little writing elsewhere and b) have been super tired and a little depressed thanks to the endless, dark, shitty Canadian winter.
To combat the winter blahs, I've decided to do a summery video battle.
Reggaeton is a seasonal product. Sure, you can hear it any time of year, but it really comes out in full force during the summer months. For me, I can always tell spring is upon us when I can't walk more than two blocks along Dufferin or Landsdowne without getting a blast of Daddy Yankee or Don Omar from an open car window.
For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, reggaeton is a mix of dancehall reggae, hip-hop and Latin music like bomba, salsa and merengue. While early '90s Panamanian MC El General is sort of considered the first reggaeton artist, the music didn't really start blowing up until the Puerto Ricans got a hold of it. They initially called the music Dem Bow, since most of the songs jacked the beat from a Shabba Ranks tune of the same name. Puerto Ricans like Tego Calderon, Daddy Yankee, and Don Omar represent the bulk of the genre's stars, and Puerto Rican-Americans in New York, Florida and New England gave reggaeton a beachhead in North America.
After a decade and a half of Latin Love, reggaeton crossed over into the English market in 2004, when both Don Omar's "Dale Don Dale" and Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" made a mark on English Top-40 radio. (An aside, I think "Gasolina" may be the most annoying song ever, and it temporarily turned me off the genre as a whole."
THE MAIN EVENT
In the Red Corner, a man who's a sex symbol throughout Latin America, despite the fact he looks like Bubbles from The Wire, TEGO CALDERON!
Tegui Calderon Rosario was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1972. He used to play in a metal band and is a formally trained drummer. He's also credited as being one of the first reggaeton artists to infuse the genre with a heavy dose of East Coast hip-hop. If there's such a thing as a thinking man's reggaeton artist, Tego would be it. While he certainly likes ass as much as the next guy, T also tried to throw a little social consciousness in with the gyrating. He traveled to Africa with Paul Wall and Raekwon to take part in a VH1 doc called Bling'd, which makes the link between hip-hop and blood diamonds. He officially stopped wearing jewelery after the trip.
Here's the video for "Cosa Buena."
THE COMPETITION
In the Blue Corner, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, reggaeton's arty guys, CALLE 13!
Calle 13 consists of three and a half people, MCs and half brothers Residente and Eduardo and multi-instrumentalist Visitante. The half member is Residente and Eduardo's sister Ileana, who provides vocals on some of the tracks.
You know reggaeton has come into its own when groups try and deny being reggaeton artists. Calle 13 go out of their way to say that reggaeton is only part of their rich sound tapestry, and that only some of their songs have the trademark reggaeton digital drumbeats. It's also worth mentioning that Calle 13 are the rich kids of the scene. While most reggaeton artists are straight hood cats, Residente, Eduardo and Ileana, although not raised in the lap of luxury, were brought up by weird boho art types. Their mom, Flor Joglar de Gracia, was part of Puerto Rican revolutionary theatre troupe Teatro de Sesenta.
This is their anthem of Puerto Rican pride (complete with shaking asses) "Atrevate-te-te."
If you don't remember, comment to vote, votes due by Friday, midnight.
I feel like sort of a douche for not writing for a month, but I've a) been doing and little writing elsewhere and b) have been super tired and a little depressed thanks to the endless, dark, shitty Canadian winter.
To combat the winter blahs, I've decided to do a summery video battle.
Reggaeton is a seasonal product. Sure, you can hear it any time of year, but it really comes out in full force during the summer months. For me, I can always tell spring is upon us when I can't walk more than two blocks along Dufferin or Landsdowne without getting a blast of Daddy Yankee or Don Omar from an open car window.
For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, reggaeton is a mix of dancehall reggae, hip-hop and Latin music like bomba, salsa and merengue. While early '90s Panamanian MC El General is sort of considered the first reggaeton artist, the music didn't really start blowing up until the Puerto Ricans got a hold of it. They initially called the music Dem Bow, since most of the songs jacked the beat from a Shabba Ranks tune of the same name. Puerto Ricans like Tego Calderon, Daddy Yankee, and Don Omar represent the bulk of the genre's stars, and Puerto Rican-Americans in New York, Florida and New England gave reggaeton a beachhead in North America.
After a decade and a half of Latin Love, reggaeton crossed over into the English market in 2004, when both Don Omar's "Dale Don Dale" and Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" made a mark on English Top-40 radio. (An aside, I think "Gasolina" may be the most annoying song ever, and it temporarily turned me off the genre as a whole."
THE MAIN EVENT
In the Red Corner, a man who's a sex symbol throughout Latin America, despite the fact he looks like Bubbles from The Wire, TEGO CALDERON!
Tegui Calderon Rosario was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1972. He used to play in a metal band and is a formally trained drummer. He's also credited as being one of the first reggaeton artists to infuse the genre with a heavy dose of East Coast hip-hop. If there's such a thing as a thinking man's reggaeton artist, Tego would be it. While he certainly likes ass as much as the next guy, T also tried to throw a little social consciousness in with the gyrating. He traveled to Africa with Paul Wall and Raekwon to take part in a VH1 doc called Bling'd, which makes the link between hip-hop and blood diamonds. He officially stopped wearing jewelery after the trip.
Here's the video for "Cosa Buena."
THE COMPETITION
In the Blue Corner, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, reggaeton's arty guys, CALLE 13!
Calle 13 consists of three and a half people, MCs and half brothers Residente and Eduardo and multi-instrumentalist Visitante. The half member is Residente and Eduardo's sister Ileana, who provides vocals on some of the tracks.
You know reggaeton has come into its own when groups try and deny being reggaeton artists. Calle 13 go out of their way to say that reggaeton is only part of their rich sound tapestry, and that only some of their songs have the trademark reggaeton digital drumbeats. It's also worth mentioning that Calle 13 are the rich kids of the scene. While most reggaeton artists are straight hood cats, Residente, Eduardo and Ileana, although not raised in the lap of luxury, were brought up by weird boho art types. Their mom, Flor Joglar de Gracia, was part of Puerto Rican revolutionary theatre troupe Teatro de Sesenta.
This is their anthem of Puerto Rican pride (complete with shaking asses) "Atrevate-te-te."
If you don't remember, comment to vote, votes due by Friday, midnight.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Big Wins a Gwaan: Buju Banton Wins
This week's reggae battle provided us with the strangest result to date, with four votes cast and final tally of 2 - 1 - 1 in favour of Buju. (The extra vote was a write in for Shabba Ranks. Thanks for fucking up the system Stephanie.)
For a victory video, I decided to do something a little more recent. Unlike Super Cat, or Shabba Ranks, Buju still has a really active career. This is the video for "Driver A," it came out last year on the album Too Bad. Too Bad was Buju's first real dancehall album after spending the last decade getting progressively rootsier. This song is straight fire, and the guy in the video has a good hat. Enjoy.
For a victory video, I decided to do something a little more recent. Unlike Super Cat, or Shabba Ranks, Buju still has a really active career. This is the video for "Driver A," it came out last year on the album Too Bad. Too Bad was Buju's first real dancehall album after spending the last decade getting progressively rootsier. This song is straight fire, and the guy in the video has a good hat. Enjoy.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, April 4, 2008
My Definition of a Boombastic Blog Entry: The Dream Warriors Win
OK, I really don't know what down this week, but people really didn't seem to be feeling the battle. Maybe it wasn't my best writing, maybe I didn't plug this week's battle enough, or maybe people just weren't feeling the CanRap concept. I know Sqwd wasn't.
Anyway, we still managed to get some sort of a result, so that's OK. Dream Warriors took it 2 - 1.
And hey, that's all good, the people have spoken. The only problem is that it makes it a little tough for me to post a victory video. Everything after their first album, And Now, The Legacy Begins, was total crap. The original video for "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" is impossible to find, to the point where I think I may have hallucinated it, and the second video for that song is pretty pretentious and wretched.
The only thing left for me to do is post the video for "Ludi," the third single off the Legacy album. To be honest, it's my least favourite of the three singles off that album, in part because I thought the idea of a rap song about a board game was pretty weak. I still maintain that position, but listening to the song again, I'm blown away by how catchy it is. As a rap song, it's sort of weak, but re-contextualized as a pop-reggae song, it's damn near perfect.
Anyway, we still managed to get some sort of a result, so that's OK. Dream Warriors took it 2 - 1.
And hey, that's all good, the people have spoken. The only problem is that it makes it a little tough for me to post a victory video. Everything after their first album, And Now, The Legacy Begins, was total crap. The original video for "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" is impossible to find, to the point where I think I may have hallucinated it, and the second video for that song is pretty pretentious and wretched.
The only thing left for me to do is post the video for "Ludi," the third single off the Legacy album. To be honest, it's my least favourite of the three singles off that album, in part because I thought the idea of a rap song about a board game was pretty weak. I still maintain that position, but listening to the song again, I'm blown away by how catchy it is. As a rap song, it's sort of weak, but re-contextualized as a pop-reggae song, it's damn near perfect.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
We Have a Winner! Congratulations Noreaga!
OK, apparently you motherfuckers don’t respect the democratic process, since only four of you bothered to vote.
Sadly, we ended this week's polling in a two-two tie. After a tie-breaker (coin flip), Noreaga was crowned this week’s champion. If you have a problem with that, you should have fucking voted.
In celebration of Noreaga’s triumph, we’re going to put up another one of his video’s. This is “Mas Maiz” off of 2006 reggaeton album/orgy of guest artists N.O.R.E. y la Familia … Ya Tú Sabe. To give you an idea of how many guests artists are on this album, this joint alone features Big Mato, Nina Sky, La Negra, Fat Joe, Lumidee, Chingo Bling and Lil’ Rob. With that many guests, it’s a small miracle Noreaga gets on the cut at all.
A few more things about this song:
1) I want to have sex with Lumidee in the worst way.
2) Fat Joe’s Spanish is about as good as my French. His mother must be appalled.
3) Chingo Bling is a fucking genius.
Go get it.
Sadly, we ended this week's polling in a two-two tie. After a tie-breaker (coin flip), Noreaga was crowned this week’s champion. If you have a problem with that, you should have fucking voted.
In celebration of Noreaga’s triumph, we’re going to put up another one of his video’s. This is “Mas Maiz” off of 2006 reggaeton album/orgy of guest artists N.O.R.E. y la Familia … Ya Tú Sabe. To give you an idea of how many guests artists are on this album, this joint alone features Big Mato, Nina Sky, La Negra, Fat Joe, Lumidee, Chingo Bling and Lil’ Rob. With that many guests, it’s a small miracle Noreaga gets on the cut at all.
A few more things about this song:
1) I want to have sex with Lumidee in the worst way.
2) Fat Joe’s Spanish is about as good as my French. His mother must be appalled.
3) Chingo Bling is a fucking genius.
Go get it.
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