Toppa Top 10: Barrington Levy’s Biggest Tunes

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May 3, 2011

7. “Bad Boyz” with Shyne (2000)
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Besides for Junior Reid, Levy has gotten more love from hip-hop than any other dancehall OG (and hip-hop loves dancehall OGs, as they should), recording tunes over the years with Snoop, Jadakiss and Canada’s Rascalz and K-Os, among others. But his most memorable links were with Belize-born, Flatbush-bred (and now, apparently, Israel-based) rapper Shyne, on his self-titled 2000 album for Bad Boy Records. While Levy has a solid turn on that album’s “Bonnie and Clyde” it’s the Grace Jones/Sly and Robbie-sampling “Bad Boyz” that people still go nuts for to this day and which we ranked at No. 2 on our Top 10 all-time deejay/rapper collabos. And he’s still going…Jadakiss, Kardinal Offishall and Mobb Deep are among the hip-hop acts Levy has recorded with in recent years.