Baddest Hip Hop Dancehall Re-Mixes (Old School Version)

Dancehall and Hip Hop share the same musical heritage and over the years artist continue to do a fusion through re-mixes. We identified the hottest baddest Remixes, old school style,found mostly from the early days. No long talking just enjoy and tell us what other songs should have been on the list

Lets start it off with STR8 Fire from Junior Reid

 
Then digging back into the crates to 1995 Def JAM Big Chuneee over the classic Dougie Fresh beat and Marley Marl instrumentals.

Then dutty yeah Sean Paul and Busta Rhymes


Who can forgot this classic ..........Maaaad

Clean Bandit steals the formula for Crossover

Whats up Mad Music Lovers , Free  Up  Friday is is here so lets get it poppin. Today we throw some spotlight on Sean Paul. Firstly Congrats to Dutty Paul and his wife Jinx on the recent birth of their son, Levi Blaze. We see Sean's Legacy is Still every "Blazin"

Well Sean continues his formula for pop success with this collab, Rockabye with the group Clean Bandit. The song is about hardships of single mothers and obviously  refers to the nursery rhyme of the same name.
 
The song became Clean Bandit's first number one single in Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand and Switzerland. Also in the US it reached Number One on Billboard's  Dance/Mix Show Airplay.


Like the lip sych sequence to Sean Pauls' verse wonder how many takes they needed to catch it right..LOL

This is not the first Clean Bandit's dabble with Dancehall you might recall they did another chart hit with Stylo G on Come Over .BTW  Stylo G is one of the dancehall artist who is  more recognized for his music outside of Jamaica more than within.

We like how they integrate the strings into the music it is no surprise that  Clean Bandit are considered  an electronic, classical crossover, pop band.....maaaad kewl

Dancehall Burns a new sound into Dance music

Love this song, "Burn" by British song bird Ellie Goulding. Apart from it just being a mad catchy song,  what caught our attention is the obvious dancehall influence, with it reggae synths and drum beats.

It earned Goulding her first number-one single on the UK Singles Chart, staying atop the charts there for three consecutive weeks. The track attained similar success internationally, reaching the top ten in countries such as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and Sweden.

The song in recent time has received regular rotation here in Jamaica and  no surprise it harkens to the soul of any reggae or dancehall fan.

Although obviously an electronic dance pop song its drum beat heard in the second verse has the syncopated patter heard in most of the latest dancehall  jams. All this track needs now is Vybz Kartel or Busy to jump on the remix and the song shotttt.

If you have any doubts, check out the progression on the first few bars of this Sean Paul cross over  hit with Kelly Rowland  compared to the Ellie Goulding song the synth similarity is uncanny. Some even say Ellie's song is done to try and capture the "Stargate" sound that created a number of hits in recent times including "How Deep is your Love" which was also produced by "Stargate"...............maaaaaaaaaaaaadd

Duttty Wine Dancehall at Superbowl courtesy of Beyonce

We know 2 weeks has gone since the Superbowl but people are still talking about her performance and how awe inspiring and impressive it was. It  was quite a spectacular 12 min show but what we really liked was the reggae infusion and special effects that accompanied that set and again gave reggae some well deserved shine.

Queen B continued her dalliance with dancehall by featuring the dancehall influenced hit single "Baby Boy" into her energetic superbowl performance....... maaad. 

We were half expecting Dutttttttty yeah Sean Paul too spring out of the stage like Destiny Child and join Beyonce in rocking the show but it appears that Bey didn't want to share any of her limelight, but  with a global audience of 140 Million people Sean Paul will see a good hunk of change coming from publishing anyway (cha ching!).   No worries Beyonce had said her performance was an All Girls affair (note her all girl band and back up dancers) plus doesn't she sing this song about " Girls Run this World" .

Not only did she sample the ubiquitous murder she wrote riddim to remix her song but she also went in to an extended  dutty wine choregrpahy which would have made the best dancehall queen proud of  her efforts. Dancehall Music and its dances to the world .....maaaaadd.

Enjoy Beys' performance in its powerhouse entirety:  (or fast forward to dancehall @ 6 min mark)

Harry Belafonte does it again, new music for a new generation

Some of you may have seen the recent Documentary on Harry Belafonte on HBO entitled "Sing your Song".  As a further recognition to this icon I thought it was timely to highlight some new music he has released  to a new generation. Well not exactly new music, the Miami cross over/dance/ rap star Pit Bull has taken the classic Harry Belafonte song "Jump In the Line" and turned it into another dance floor classic. Listen first to the Belafonte classic, "Jump in the Line", you will appreciate there weren't videos around then or even channels like MTV to play them.

"Jump In the Line" is a song composed by Trinidadian calypsonian  Lord Kitchner and won the 1946 Trinidad Carnival Road March. It was recorded by Harry Belafonte in 1961. It was released on the album Jump Up Calypso, and was later featured in the films, Beetlejuice and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning.

The remix features our own Sean Paul strangely enough re-adding some modern Jamaican dancehall flavour to this 50 year old Caribbean classic.  The  official video is not yet out but enjoy this fan made version for now. 

Harry Belafonte respect is due to you,  your music truly lives on. You sure made Jamaica and the Caribbean proud.