I Know Her: Off-topic, Off-duty Friday Night 90s Flashback Rockin’ Party

Thank you for this! I didn’t realize that Cannonball had an impact on me, but it started playing and I was in my high school best friends bedroom for a sleepover.

Nice to see PJ Harvey represented. Anyone else here like her stuff? I quite like Is This Desire? and Uh Huh Her. There’s some Bikini Kill in here, that’s never a bad sign. Also, I see some artists whose names I recognize but who I’ve never heard, like Veruca Salt and Belly.

As an aside, maybe this thread should just be the place where we post our tastes in music? I have a big list of artists but don’t feel I have an opportunity to talk about them ever.

Can anybody tell me how to embed videos here?

This whole band is awesome, especially if you`re into experimental extreme metal. This is one of their more mellow songs:

I don’t think anyone will be interested in this, but here’s a short history of 90s dancehall, with non-homophobic song links.

The early 90s were dominated by artists who had already had their major breakthrough in the 80s, including Admiral Bailey, Super Cat, and the legendary Ninjaman who never reached his potential as a recording artist, but is still a widely celebrated live performer to this day. Below is a video clip from 1990, showing the epic clash between Ninjaman and Shabba Ranks, with a guest appearance by a very young Risto Benji. This is from the show Sting, which is held annually on Boxing Day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htzzg0jaMow

A few things happened in the early 90s, which brought in a new era of dancehall music. First of all, Shabba Ranks got a huge international breakthrough and brought global attention to Jamaican music in a way that hadn’t been seen since the days of Bob Marley. His style of delivery naturally influenced many of the younger artists, and permanently changed the direction of Jamaican music in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUT5Uf96Rh8

Meanwhile, many major artists made their recording debut in right around the beginning of the new decade, including Capleton, Mad Cobra, Beenie Man (who had released an album as a child DJ in 1983, but now returned to the scene as an adult), Bounty Killer, and many more. At Sting 1993, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man had a famous clash that was the starting point of a beef which is still active to some extent, 23 years later. Both of these artists continued to produce hit records for the entirety of the 90s, and Beenie Man is still one of the most popular artists in Jamaica at the moment, while Bounty Killer has taken a back seat to younger artists since the early 2000s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-lEtWyD0sw

The early 90s was also known as the Bogle era of dancehall. Bogle was an enormously popular dancer who would create dance moves to all sorts of popular songs, and whose dances sometimes crossed over into mainstream culture. The artist Buju Banton had his debut around this time, and was closely associated with Bogle in his early days. Bogle was sadly killed in a shooting in 2005, while Buju Banton is currently serving a 10 year prison sentence in the US, for cocaine trafficking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAFjEV-6eiY

With the rise of a new generation of dancehall artists, some of the superstars of the 1980s slowly faded, notably Josey Wales, Yellowman, Peter Metro, Ranking Joe, etc. It was also an extremely violent time, with many artists losing their lives to gun violence and other incidents.

The artist Tiger, originally known as Ranking Tiger, had many hits in the 80s and for a while dominated the reggae charts into the 90s with his highly unorthodox style. In 1993, he sadly suffered life threatening injuries from a motorcycle accident, which ruined his ability to sing and perform. It took a decade before his voice was strong enough to record again, and he has done some live performances since the mid-2000s, although there’s not much left of what is one of my personal favorite artists of all time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lODbQJ5_eU

One of the foundation artists of early dancehall was Tenor Saw, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1988, in Texas. The popular singer Nitty Gritty was shot and killed in Brooklyn in 1991. 1993 saw the death of one of Jamaica’s brightest stars, Pan Head, who was murdered by an unknown gunman. The artist Dirtsman was shot to death only two months later, an incident which led to Dirtsman’s brother, with the stage name Papa San, turning away from dancehall culture and starting a second career as a Christian gospel singer. The legendary 1980s artist Early B was also shot and killed the following year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQajQrky08o

The bloody and tragic events of the early 90s led to a backlash of more uplifting and silly music in the second half of the decade. The label Main Street, with producer Danny Brownie, dominated the airwaves for a few years, with artists such as General Degree, Madd Anju, Hawkeye, Buccaneer, Goofy, Crissy D, Red Rat, and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5VsgkBeJ10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBiCUz2-rCw

According to Red Rat himself, he got his stage name from his friend General Degree, with the motivation “you’re red and you look like a rat”.

An emerging trend from the mid-90s and on was the tendency of artists to group themselves together in crews or collectives, mostly collaborating with other artists within the same group, and using their own in-house producers. Main Street was already mentioned above, and Beenie Man’s Shocking Vibes crew was another popular label from this time. In some cases, artists performed together under a band name instead of as individual artists “featuring” one another. Most notably, this included the Monster Shock Crew, consisting of Roundhead, General B, and the eccentric singer Ghost, as well as the Scare Dem Crew, with members Elephant Man, Harry Toddler, Boom Dandemyte, and singer Nitty Kutchie, with Bounty Killer serving as their mentor and sometimes guest starring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mj7TAUKCnE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_l2evZgL8

Elephant Man, in particular, went on to have an extremely successful solo career in the 00s, with several international hits.

The final years of the decade was dominated by the widespread return of so called singjaying, a form of vocal style located somewhere between traditional singing and what is in Jamaica known as deejaying or toasting. (A Jamaican DJ would be called an MC in American lingo, while an American DJ would be called a Selecta in Jamaican lingo.) Most popular artists in the 1980s were to some extent singjays, but the success of Shabba Ranks and others shifted the focus to more rough voiced deejays, sometimes bordering on rap. Two of the big breakthrough acts of the late 90s were Mr. Vegas and the 4-man group T.O.K. (Touch Of Klass, or Taking Over Kingston).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBqyy-bAUm0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBtSkR36nNA

While Mr. Vegas’ early hits now sound very outdated to a modern dancehall audience, he was incredibly influential at the time, and arguably served as a forerunner to dancehall singers and deejays of the modern day, such as Jah Vinci, Popcaan, Blak Ryno, Mavado, Demarco, Taurus Riley, Deep Jahi, etc. Mr. Vegas’ instantly recognizable singing style was adopted in his early career, when he got into a fight and had his jaw broken by a crowbar. While his jaw was wired shut for an extended period of time, he practiced singing without moving his jaw, i.e. with a wide smile and almost clenched teeth. According to his own story, his audience responded very well to his first few shows after the injury, so he just continued singing in that fashion for his entire career.

I have mentioned almost no female artists in this post, and that’s mostly because there weren’t many around in the 90s. Women in Jamaican popular music had mostly been singers, and the general style of dancehall in the 90s didn’t incorporate much straight up singing. However, the decade did see the rise of Lady Saw, nicknamed the Queen of Dancehall. She is still recording to this day, and a very respected artist with “dancehall elder” status. This is one of the biggest hit songs of her career, on the classic Joyride riddim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhO1C191YsM

Another female artist who was prominent in the 90s was Lady Mackerel. She had a few songs in the late 80s, but continued recording throughout the following decade. This was in a time where female deejays were almost always prefixed as “Lady”, “Sister”, “Queen”, etc. The few popular female deejays of the 80s were Sister Nancy (who now works at a bank in New Jersey), Lady Ann, Mother Liza (who was mostly active as a duo together with N****r Kojak – yes, that was his actual stage name, minus the stars), Queen Patra, and Lady G. When Lady Mackerel, real name Charmaine Munroe, came to the scene, she was promoted as a “female version” of popular male deejay Major Mackerel, and her first hit record was a “response” to a Major Mackerel song, from a female perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CZp2dfEbAU

She later retired her Lady Mackerel persona, stating she never wanted to be a mackerel to begin with. After some time away from the industry, she came back in the 00s and had a successful career as Macka Diamond.

I’ll end with an honorary mention of the deejay Reggie Stepper, who I’ve called “the King of Schwa”, due to his frequent use of the mid central, or neutral, vowel sound. He would incorporate strange shouts of the neutral vowel sound into almost every song, which proved to be a powerful gimmick among the hundreds and hundres of new deejays fighting for the spotlight in the early 90s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zeiki-obkvM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS09DvBx5-Y

Chu chuuuu

Oh, this is great. It’s a lot like my husband’s taste in music. I call him a ‘girl-band geek’, since he loves girls in bands. Mostly rock, but the occasional singer-songwriter and pop star too. Things got really fun after I introduced him to metal (he never listened to it as a teen, liking post-punk better). Now I hear Halestorm and other female fronted metal bands a lot. This is fine.

Hope you’re enjoying your break David. I’ve recently fallen in love with Bongwater, so I’ll (hopefully) leave this here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SnYHjZ2IyFo

Good call. Trip hop was awesome. Are you into Sneaker Pimps?

Don’t know if she is, but I am! Also, IAMX aka Chris Corner from the Sneaker Pimps.

Slightly off-topic, but Jackie made this awesome Handsome Jack playlist if anyone would like a listen to that.

(This playlist is the reason that Geekin’ is my new jam.)

@FrickleFrackle:

Nice to see PJ Harvey represented. Anyone else here like her stuff?

Down by the Water is on my Halloween playlist.

EJ: Nope, Jackie made this one for one of their favorite Borderlands characters, and linked it to me so I could have a listen, so I thought I’d share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O17f3lB7BFY

I’m having trouble figuring out how to embed this properly.

@guy
I think someone said you need to remove the ‘s’ from https to get it to embed.

@ EJ (The Other One)

I haven’t been listening to Sneaker Pimps, but I think I’ll probably start 😀

So has anyone mentioned Babes in Toyland yet?