Jesse Serwer, Author at LargeUp

World’s Fastest Interview: Exclusive Q&A with Puma Posterbwoys No-Maddz

Words by Jesse Serwer You may have caught Puma's commercials for their new Faas running shoes starring "the world's fastest band" harmonizing their way through Jamaica on TV recently. The members of this... Read More...

Toppa Top 10: Top Gunslinger-Inspired Deejays

Words by Jesse Serwer The Wild West has been a major influence on reggae music since its beginnings in the late '60s, when Spaghetti Westerns like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly were all the rage in Ja... Read More...

Shotta Culture: Jamaican Movie ‘Out The Gate’ to Play U.S Theaters

Words by Jesse Serwer Jamaica has produced its share of well-known movies (The Harder They Come, Dancehall Queen, etc.), but very few have caught on at theaters internationally, even in the diaspora capi... Read More...

Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum: Rihanna x Vado, ‘Man Down (Remix)’

Words by Jesse Serwer Here's a tune tailor-made for a springtime weekend: Cam'Ron sidekick/new Interscope signee Vado yesterday turned up on a remix of "Man Down," the rough-and-rugged, reggae-flavored h... Read More...

Bruk Up: Reggae Dancing Workshop X History Lesson

Words by Jesse Serwer When the earliest B-boys were first getting busy on the linoleum floors of the Bronx in the 1970s, no one would have imagined that "hip-hop dance" would one day be offered at every ... Read More...

He Was There: Gappy Ranks on the Earthquake in Japan

Words by Jesse Serwer, via the Guardian A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to interview rising UK reggae star Gappy Ranks for an article, "From Harlesden to Yokohama," which appeared in today's edit... Read More...

Throwback Thursdays: Sweet Micky “San Ou”

Words by Jesse Serwer and Eddie STATS Houghton Michel Martelly looks presidential as he prepares to tackle one of the world's hardest jobs: hauling earthquake- and poverty-ravaged Haiti back from the bri... Read More...

Cable Clash: Major Lazer Cartoon Characters Revealed!

Words by Jesse Serwer (via Mad Decent) Talk of a Major Lazer series on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block has circulated for a minute, and Switch discussed its progress in an interview with the Onio... Read More...

Toppa Top 10: Top 10 Garnet Silk Tunes

Words by Jesse Serwer This past Saturday, April 2, would have been the 45th birthday of one of reggae/dancehall's golden voices: Garnet Silk. A supremely righteous, one-man antidote to the slackful '90s,... Read More...

Video: Nas & Damian Marley “Land of Promise”

Words by Eddie STATS Houghton (via Okayplayer) The dynamical duo of Pan-African upliftment, Nas and Damian Marley are back with the next video from the Distant Relatives project. “Land of Promise” happen... Read More...

Return of Django: New Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry Music + Movie Trailer

Words by Jesse Serwer Anything involving Lee "Scratch" Perry is usually better off left unexplained. His burning down of his own legendary creative haven Black Ark Studios in 1979, for one thing. The va... Read More...

Good Thing Going: Reggae Historian Beth Lesser’s New Sugar Minott Book

Words by Jesse Serwer, via The Hype Life and Shimmy Shimmy Last summer reggae lost one of its great, and most unsung, icons in sweet-voiced Sugar Minott. Here's how we remembered the dancehall pioneer's ... Read More...

Author Jesse Serwer