I'm from the Caribbean, and I love the dance hall sound.
I grew up listening to Bob Marley, Jill Scott, Floetry, Nas, Jay-Z, Beyonce.
I know that people everywhere listen to hip-hop, but especially being from the South, you really get that influence. You go out, you party, and it's just always there. Also, I grew up listening and loving reggae music, too.
If you look at reggae and dancehall artists in general, there isn't really a big success story. A Shabba Ranks or a Yellowman might have a hit, but there's never a follow up. There's no consistency.
I really like dancehall. I really like reggae. I'm a big fan. Bob Marley and all that.
Here's the key to Jamaica, the secret to Jamaican dancehall parties, no matter where you are in the world. If you do not see Japanese people, you're at the wrong party. They source authenticity like no other culture I've ever seen.
Everyone my age probably grew up listening to the 'perreos' of Plan B.
My dad used to play old dancehall records - Cutty Ranks, Ranking Dread, Michael Prophet, these type of dudes.
If reggae comes from another country, you can have the relationship to reggae that I have to rock. But it's something I grew up with. It's probably something I appreciate more now. In the '80s, I was all about New Wave and synth pop - New Order and Depeche Mode and Eurythmics and Michael Jackson and tons and tons and tons of Prince.
Reggae is my heart since I was a kid. I love Reggae music.
Reggae is a culture. It's easy, laid-back.
Jamaican music can be aggressive, soulful, smooth and exciting all at once - just like hip-hop. At the same time, there's nothing like Jamaica in the United States. Jamaica is its own thing.
When it comes to dance hall music, I definitely listened to a lot of Vybz Kartel growing up or Gyptian and Mavado.
My dad used to play reggae and Afrobeats. Every Sunday, we used to have these records, vinyls. And he would just play all of them - Super Cat, Ninja Man, Buju Banton.
I can remember the first time I ever recorded my vocals on to a beat. Cat Coore from Third World - a legendary Jamaican band - had a little demo set up at his house. I'm very good friends with his eldest son, Shiah, who plays with me now. So we were rhyming over a track by the dancehall artist Peter Metro. I've still got it somewhere.
In Jamaica, them always have throwback riddims, recycled old beats, and the hardcore reggae scene is always present. You have faster stuff like the more commercialized stuff, but you always have that segment of music that is always from the core, from the original root of it.
I see dancehall reggae and hip-hop as fused together, When I was a kid, they were the two kinds of music that spoke to me and said 'Move!'
Dancehall has always had a homophobic problem, but you go to dance parties in Jamaica, and some of the biggest dancers are kinda gay, just not outspoken about it. Dancehall was the first kind of music I was DJing, and it was always more about the rhythm.
Dancehall is just like hip-hop in that it doesn't always talk about bling; it talks about conscious issues.
Jamaican reggae is the style of music I always reach for when ranting to friends about how you could listen to one style of music exclusively for the rest of your life - and it would all be great and varied and worth hearing.
Junior Blender is a hardcore dancehall head. He's in Supersonic, which is one of the top soundclash sound-systems in Europe.
I grew up on dancehall music, and it holds a strong place in my heart.
Dancehall culture in Europe is very close to Jamaica. Europe and Japan have a very close link to Jamaican dancehall culture, where it's all about sound-systems and horns and girls dancing all crazy - that happens a lot in those places.
I used to buy records in high school. Mainly dancehall: Super Cat, Buju Banton.
Dancehall music is perceived as party music, which it is because of the rhythm, but there are messages that do come through or a purpose of an artist saying something to the world. People usually don't get the messages because of the partying.
