Mad Lion - "Take it Easy" b/w "Big Box of Blunts" (Weeded Records, 1994)
There is a low-key ragga/dancehall revival happening in
hip-hop right now. A$AP Ferg’s great second single from Trap Lord is an ode to Shabba Ranks. The best moment on Yeezus was Assassin hijacking “I’m In It”
with his roaring patois. Grime is expanding its borders to include more ragga
influences. And Duppy Gun is bringing dancehall into the future.
Musical trends tend to come around again roughly twenty
years later, whether it’s Greenwich Village in the late fifties reviving the
folk sounds of the Dust Bowl, or early British punk plundering Chuck Berry, or
Dr. Dre retrofitting P-Funk into G-funk. This mini ragga resurgence is not too
surprising coming about two decades after the ragga boom of the early nineties.
Shabba Ranks was at his peak, Phife Dawg, Busta Rhymes, Smif-n-Wessun (who Mad
Lion is pictured with above), O.G.C., and Das EFX were all rapping in patois,
and Spice 1 was sampling reggae songs and getting regional hits.
