From Sean Paul to Byron Messia? Charting the Evolution of Dancehall Hits

Byron Messia made a claim on Monday that his song Talibans which spent one week on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 at No. 99 is the biggest dancehall song since 2005. That year Sean Paul’s ‘Temperature’ topped the chart. The comments which have since been deleted from his Instagram Stories drew criticisms from fans of the genre.

To be fair, althgouh it may seem premature Byron has reasons to celebrate his quick success which saw him reach top 20 in the U.K. with Talibans, leading to the song being certified Silver for selling 200,000 units of sales and streams in that country. Last week the remix with Burna Boy reached a new peak of No. 18 in the Billboard Airplay Chart.

Still, Taliban’s has not yet delivered the goods to be considered a “greatest song” contender, neither in terms of sales or critical acclaim. For example there are over 100 certified RIAA Diamond singles in the U.S. for selling 10 million units and four of them are Dancehall tunes.

What Makes a Dancehall Song?

Some people are even saying that what Byron does isn’t considered dancehall for all its Trap elements and the fact that he doest reside in Jamaica. However, Dancehall, characterized by the “boof baff riddim” driven beat, pioneered by Sugar Minott, King Jammys, Steely & Clevie and others continues to be one of the most influential genres of music in the 21st century more than 50 years later as it is fused with rock, pop, hip hop, Afrobeats, and R&B.

“During that period of making tracks for King Jammyz, we considered we were just making reggae music, we never gave it a name but later on being associated with music being played and accepted among the Dance Hall audience and being accepted by the Dance Hall sound system, people gave it the name, Dancehall Music” Clevie told WMV.

He describes dancehall as an aggressive attitude citing early examples like “No No No” by Dawn Penn.

“For me as a pioneer of the genre that had specific beats and patterns or in some cases there might not have been a beat different but the attitude made it different. A song like ‘No, No, No’ by Dawn Penn for instance the feel was a little more aggressive in the mix that fell perfectly into the dancehall genre although it wasn’t ‘buff baff beat.’ I realize you can mix reggae music with an attitude that makes it acceptable as dancehall.”

“Dancehall I would say is an attitude,” he said.

From Rihanna’s “Work” Drake, Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam, Drake’s One Dance with Wizkid to Justin Bieber’s What Do You Mean? These are 50 of the biggest certified dancehall songs of all time with plenty of releases after 2005.

The data provided is courtesy of the RIAA, British Phonographic Industry and Luminate.

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