3. Popcaan “Everything Nice” (Remix feat. Mavado)
Popcaan dropped “Everything Nice” as a way of announcing his debut album Where We Come From (#2 on our list of 2014’s Toppa Top Albums) back in October of 2013, but the track really took off in the springtime of this year when Mavado added his voice to a remix that officially extinguished any lingering embers from the Gully/Gaza feud. (Wow, that seems like ancient history, doesn’t it?). In both its original and remixed form, “Everything Nice” is a gamechanger—a melancholic slow burner produced by a US-based outsider (Dubbel Dutch) who’d never made a dancehall single before. Hitting in Jamaica right around the same time as Vybz Kartel’s guilty verdict, the remix’s mixture of optimism and introspection managed perfectly captured that moment in dancehall, while reaching way beyond the confines of Jamaica to become a worldwide summer anthem. —Jesse Serwer
SEE ALSO: POPCAAN – “V.S.O.P.”