“Collaboration over clash, let’s go get the cash,” words attributed to Sean Paul as he simplified the need for more collaborations among dancehall artists. His Grammy nominated album ‘Live N Livin’ released last year has fifteen hardcore Dancehall collaborations. Sean has been advocating for Dancehall unity as a way to develop the genre.
He told World Music Views that the reason why he included many dancehall acts like Skillibeng and Intence on ‘Live N Livin’ was to try to show them a different way to make music..
“I am just trying to unify everybody’s thinking and try to be the change in a likkle way and say mek we do things like this,” he said.
Along with Sean Paul, top dancehall producer Rvssian have led the pack of Jamaicans who are reaping huge benefits on the charts from collaborations. Rvssian’s artist Shenseea and RCA’s Skillibeng are also seeing early results.
Both Sean and Rvssian’s music have been streamed billions of times on YouTube. Sean’s Rockabye feature with Clean Bandit went to No. 3 on global Spotify and has been streamed over 600 million times and has 2.7 billion streams on YouTube.
Rvsian’s top song ‘Si Tu Lo Dejas’ featuring Bad Bunny X Farruko X Nicky Jam X King Kosa has surpassed 500 million YouTube streams.
Krippy Kush featuring reggaeton artists Farruko, and Bad Bunny has seven hundred million-plus streams and the remix featuring Nicki Minaj and Travis Scott has over one hundred million.
Rvssian, best known in Jamaica for producing Vybz Kartel’s hits such as the “Clarks” remix and Straight Jeans And Fitted was already a Jamaican superstar by that achievement.
Clash Talk
The latest talk of the town in the dancehall world is a pending clash between Masicka and Skeng. The latter released a song Day Break taking jabs at his opponent. Masicka is yet to respond but both artists are among a promising set of new acts from Jamaica who are fueling a dancehall renaissance and attracting record labels and publishing companies. A good clash is entertaining for fans and can be a useful marketing tool for dancehall artists, but more often than not, it has caused burnout and acts become one dimensional local stars.
Skeng, who came to fame only last year has the most streamed song on Jamaica of all time on YouTube and Masicka’s critically acclaimed 438 album has been widely accepted as one of the best dancehall albums in the last 5 years. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Reggae Billboard chart and has racked up over 100 million streams.
Both artists are in a privileged position not to make the mistakes of their predecessors who focused on local competition that comes with no prize, rather than joining forces together to ‘cash in’ internationally.
Finding The Money In Dancehall Music
According to IFPI’s global music report, Latin America is the fastest-growing region globally in music (15.9%) as streaming revenues grew by 30.2% and accounted for 84.1% of the region’s total revenues.
Other than proximity, Jamaica shares a cultural relationship with Latin countries like Costa Rica and Panama. Originally Jamaican migrants in these countries started to do the dancehall-reggae music in Spanish and called it Reggae en Español.
What is known as Reggaeton, however, was developed from the Bobby Digital’s Kukumkum Dancehall beat, and the song Dem Bow by Shabba Ranks on Rank’s Just Reality 1990 album. Dem Bow sampled from Poco Man Jam, a 1989 record by the Jamaican vocalist Gregory Peck, produced by Steely and Clevie.
Shabba Ranks himself once dominated the music industry. After winning two Grammy awards for Best Reggae Album, he was mercilessly renounced by the international media, when he went on the British television program and uttered anti-gay sentiments. The television show host abruptly ended the interview in disgust and cried shame on Shabba for his sentiments on the program. Shabba’s international career was never the same after that interview.
Dem Bow, however, has inspired a plethora of remixes across the Latin American communities in Puerto Rico and New York. The wider Latin communities have a population surpassing 500 million and they have all but completely erased Shabba Ranks’ original anti-establishment messages to place Reggaeton at the top of the international charts.
I Like It Like That by Cardi B went straight to number one on the Billboard 200 chart. J Balvin went platinum within a day with his Reggaeton album Vibras. Meanwhile Bad Bunny and Casper have been at the top of the YouTube charts for years with billions of streams.
Rvssian’s producing and code-switching is part of his musical mastery that has produced multiple hits. He can be seen sporting different hair colors and posing beside Italian sports vehicles tantamount to the American pop culture and way of life. A distance away from the violence, gun touting images, and interchangeable skin color some Jamaican artists fashion.
There is no doubt about dancehall’s universal appeal but if Jamaican artists would expand their cultural citizenship and understand the cultural languages across the world, they would see much better results in their streams than they do going at each other.
Code Switching
Code-switching is an art within itself and can help artists to solve complex marketing and financing problems.
When Jay Z said “I’ll show you how to move in a room full a vultures” that was his admission to code-switching to get ahead and stand out in a crowd. The now billionaire, who had had his fair share of clashing(battling) , has proven that reading the room and making accurate artistic decisions are better ways to maneuver problematic situations in the industry.
Active consumption for dancehall music on Spotify has been low and much lower on the Billboard charts in the past decade. The genre has not been able to make superstars as quick as Reggaeton. Building musical bridges with more local and cross-cultural collaborations, move dancehall music from a niche genre as more artists begin to flourish. Artists would start to swim upstream and make their way back on the Billboard charts.
A view shared by Grammy Award winning producer Stephen Di Genius McGregor who told World Music Views, that his wish for Jamaican artists is for them to understand the whole business and collaborate instead of competing. He uses the example of the Afrobeats culture to infer that the collaborative approach will help Jamaica’s industry. He says if there are more than one major artist from Jamaica at a time bursting on the international scene the impact would be bigger.
“It woulda look better in the bigger culture,” he says.
Reggaeton has created for itself an audience with hundreds of millions of people ready to digest its addictive qualities because it fuses hip hop, reggae and the latin influences. All put together, the potential audience reach includes people with the power to pay for streaming services and buy concert tickets. The two most important metrics in the music industry.
