Words by Eddie STATS Houghton

If you read Ghetto Palms in the last two years (or went to a reggae dance or looked up ‘bashment’ in the dictionary) you have probably come across an artist named Busy Signal. I would say that he has been owning dancehall lately (Kartel who?) but ever since I talked about his grimy downtempo flow in FADER 56 it seems like he has been on a mission to own every other genre in the music database. In that time he has dropped multiple soca collabos with the likes of Machel Montano, Bunji Garlin and Faye Ann Lyons, interpolated Phil Collins and the Commodores on his dancehall hooks, released an EPs worth of tributes over Michael Jackson tracks, voiced Baltimore club, samba, weird highlife/afrobeat rhythms and chatted over Kung Fu sound fx and Indian percussion licks so spare that trendy club producers like Douster and SoShifty can’t resist refixing them into rave anthems.