Check It Deeply: When Jamaican Reggae Met Miami Bass

Words by Scott Brown, with Jesse Serwer

Hip-hop’s deep foundation in Jamaican toasting is well documented, but the mixing of music between the Caribbean island and the States reaches further south than the Bronx. Throughout the 70s and 80s, artists who contributed greatly to the rise of reggae in Jamaica, including Joe Gibbs, Ernest Ranglin, Inner Circle and Noel “King Sporty” Williams, were playing a role in the development of music in Miami. These influential reggae pioneers were involved in Miami recordings that varied from rap, funk, disco and electro. And the role of Jamaicans and other Caribbean people in the music business of South Florida in many ways contributed to the success of the region’s homegrown genre of Bass music.

As a reggae producer, Joe Gibbs was behind many of Dennis Brown’s most notable hits, including “Money in My Pocket.” The founder of the Amalgamated label and other imprints, Gibbs got his start in the rocksteady era, working with Lee “Scratch” Perry and Bunny Lee, before going on to contribute to reggae’s development producing for the likes of Gregory Issacs, Jacob Miller, Freddie McGregor, Culture and Beres Hammond.

Gibbs set up his Joe Gibbs Music outfit in the Opa-Locka area of South Florida after leaving Jamaica in the 1970s. Most releases on the label were strictly reggae, but a couple from an act called Xanadu stand out as early examples of female rap. “Sure Shot” is a “Rapper’s Delight” type of track complete with “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” nursery rhymes, while “Rocker’s Choice” smoothly interpolates Chic’s “Good Times” with a reggae skank. It’s a sound that may very well have been rocking parties in late 70s Miami, where the Caribbean influence was steadily rising during a wave of immigration from Jamaica and other islands.

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The leading Miami-based label during the 60s and 70s was Henry Stone’s disco and soul based TK Records, which released and distributed seminal hits from KC and the Sunshine Band, George McRae and Betty Wright, to name a few. (The influence of junkanoo from the Bahamas on TK’s early disco sound is also worth noting–many of the musicians who played on the label’s releases, including the original Sunshine Band, were Bahamian). Around the time of TK Records’—and disco’s— decline, King Sporty’s Tashamba and Konduko labels were among the imprints keeping Miami’s dance music flag waving with a plethora of eletro-funk/dance/disco releases. The Jamaican-born King Sporty’s contributions to reggae prior to his arrival in Miami have been noted on LargeUp previously –among other things, he was the co-writer of Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier.”

Some Sporty-produced tracks like Der Mer’s “Fall Out” were typical of the early Miami Bass sound that was gaining popularity in the mid ’80s for its ability to rattle trunks around town. Harris Mazyck’s “Hang On” has the feel of a lot of 80s era synth-heavy R&B. Two more notable tracks on Konduko or Tashamba produced by King Sporty prominently featured rap: Youth MC’s “Funky Fresh Beat” (1986) and Classy III’s “Live & Let Die” (1985).

Miami is also where King Sporty and Ernest Ranglin collaborated for a half-reggae, half-funk album in 1983. King Sporty produced the From Kingston J.A. … to Miami U.S.A. album for Ranglin on his Konduko label, with the “Kingston J.A.” side of the album being roots reggae based, and the “Miami U.S.A” side containing disco and funk.

Ernest Ranglin is widely considered to be Jamaican music’s greatest guitarist. He played on seminal records (including Theophilus Beckford’s “Easy Snapping”) for Jamaican recording behemoths including Federal Studios and Studio One in the ’50s, and on many of Chris Blackwell’s early releases on Island Records, including Millie Small’s “My Boy Lollipop”, which he arranged. Decades and numerous classic recordings later, in the late 1980s, he found himself in Miami. In 1988, Rooney Records released what might be the most unlikely track of his long and storied career: a collaboration with Miami electro/bass producer James MCauley, aka DXJ of Maggotron. (Maggotron is considered a creative pioneer in Miami Bass, though it gained popularity, mainly overseas, well after the decline of Miami Bass).

“Phantoms of the Bass” is pretty typical of the Maggotron sound at the time, with an 808-bass heavy sound accompanied by vocal sampling. But it also has some quirky guitar riffs in Ernest Ranglin’s signature style sprinkled throughout. A year later, Ranglin would release an album We Want to Party on Rooney Records that was focused more on his usual jazz-reggae sound.

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When most people think of Miami Bass, they immediately think of 2 Live Crew, and for good reason. 2 Live Crew brought the most national attention to, and had the most commercial success with, Florida’s booming homegrown sound. 2 Live Crew’s connections to the Caribbean run pretty deep. Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell, who led the group during its boom in the 90s, is half-Jamaican (and half-Bahamian), while founding member and rapper Chris Wong Won, aka Fresh Kid Ice (or “Chinaman”), was born in Trinidad.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that the raunch in Chinaman’s lyrics had some precedence in the slack calypso of Mighty Sparrow, and in fact he admits as much in LargeUp’s interview discussing his Trini roots. “I remember [hearing] all the Sparrow songs [in Trinidad],” Wong Won says. “That’s one of the things I gotta use to my advantage, knowing about wining and all that stuff… There were things I’d seen and picked up in those days that I used later on.” Also apparent to Wong Won and others was Miami Bass culture’s emphasis on stacking large sound systems for maximum effect, much like within Caribbean sound system culture.

Providing some crucial assistance to 2 Live Crew in their early years, meanwhile, were reggae legends Inner Circle. Relocating to Miami after the death of singer Jacob Miller, brothers Ian and Roger Lewis of Inner Circle founded one of the earliest Black-owned recording studios and record pressing plants in South Florida, Circle Sound International. Michael Sterling, who played guitar in Inner Circle (and also wrote the original “Lovers and Friends” remade by Lil Jon and Usher), connected Uncle Luke with the Lewis brothers. Most of 2 Live Crew’s second album, Move Somthin’, was recorded in Inner Circle’s studio.

“My dad worked on Uncle Luke stuff, 2 Live Crew, MC Shy D, LeJuan Love,” says Ian Lewis’ son, Abebe Lewis, who runs the current incarnation of the studio, now known as Circle House Studios and Circle Village, in North Miami. (One of Miami’s best-known studios, it’s been the site of countless current-day hits, including Pharrell’s “Happy.”) “The credits are there. If you look on the backs of those albums it will say CSI Studios, mixed by Ian Lewis and David Hobbs [aka 2 Live Crew’s Mr. Mixx].”

These factors all coalesced on “Reggae Joint,” from 1989’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be. 2 Live Crew’s stab at dancehall features the crew rapping with patois flows over a version of the Sleng Teng riddim:

Pacjam, the teen club in Miami’s Carol City area run by Uncle Luke, was ground zero for Miami Bass during much of the ’80s and ’90s. Walshy Fire of Major Lazer and Black Chiney, remembers going to parties there as a kid, and hearing dancehall getting reactions—though not as much as Bahamian junkanoo.

“The DJ would play a reggae song or a dancehall song—there wasnt really a set or, if [there] was, it was about three songs long,” says Walshy, also noting the influence of merengue from the Latin Caribbean on songs like DJ Laz’s “Esa Morena,” a subject for a whole different article perhaps. “Whatever was hot. It was mostly Bahamian descendants so he might play [Red Rat’s] “Tight up Skirt” and yell “Where them Jamaicans at,” but when he dropped this Bahamian song, the whole club [would] start yelling, Goombay!”

As dancehall became more prevalent in the American mainstream in the early ’90s, it became common to have Jamaican-style toasting on hip-hop records. Though the trend was most notable in New York, it was felt even in L.A. gangster rap. Miami Bass artists also recorded songs featuring Jamaican-style toasting with varying levels of authenticity. Walshy Fire points to Bass crew Miami Boyz’s “Gangsta Bass” as a “video that sums up a whole era,” and “the complete merger of two cultures each influencing each other.”

Uncle Luke himself even went on record to state that the Miami Bass sound is “more like reggae than anything else,” in Spin magazine’s 1990 “Hip-Hop Map of America.”

Speaking today, Fresh Kid Ice, who has recently revived 2 Live Crew with fellow rapper Brother Marquis (but minus Uncle Like), directs us to “listen to the percussions … the congas, the different sounds, the way it moves” when considering the influence of the Caribbean on Miami bass. That emphasis on percussion and live feel in 2 Live Crew’s music is, he notes, “a cross between Miami Bass and Caribbean culture.”

Read on to hear some more reggae/dancehall-inspired Miami Bass.

FURTHER LISTENING

Miami Boyz – Outlawed Bass (1992)

Besides for the aforementioned “Gangsta Bass,” this 1992 album from long-running Bass crew featured dancehall vibes on two more tracks, “Ghetto Swing”  and “A Hard Blow From The Bottom,” a track with tough lyrics and an even tougher bass drop:

Jamaican Quad Squad – Rasta Bass (1994) [Con Artist Recordings]

The album featured heavy one-drop/reggae sampling and themes with digital percussion and Miami Bass drums, on tracks like “Bass Off!,” and dancehall riddims on “Bass Riddims.” Con Artist Recordings produced several other minor Miami Bass releases, some with reggae influences like Bomb Threat’s 1995 Bass-N-Tha-Jungle which featured patois-slinging rapper Scrappy on “Bomb Threat Stylee.”

Daddy Rusty – Ragabass (1995) [Metropolitan Records]

Billed as “The Ultimate Reggae Bass,” this album features dancehall deejaying over Miami Bass beats on tracks like “Stab The Punani,” with a few pop/dance beats. Listen to it here.

Madd Blunted – A Day In The Life of Madd Blunted (1995) [Vision Records]

Louis Howard aka Don Ugly co co-produced Luke’s 1997 album Changin’ the Game. Prior to that he recorded the dancehall track “Boo-Ya-Ka” on the Bogle Riddim, and the smoother but still patois filled “Wicked Thing” for Vision Records. He was featured on several songs from Miami-based Madd Blunted, including “Can I Smoke,” a NY-type track but still bass-heavy and with some touches of Yellowman.