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The song’s infectious rhythm and Levy’s velvety vocal delivery as he sings about telling a cop who accuses him of having a “stick a sensi under (his) tam,” that “Mi only smoke cigarette an strictly shag,” have made “Under Mi Sensi” an enduring classic that still gets ‘em on the dance floor.ģ. “Under Mi Sensi” was a hit in the clubs as well as on the reggae charts in the UK and Jamaica when it was first released. Perhaps its Levy’s cool and casual vocal style as he toasts and croons over a sparse guitar riff and a simple C minor reggae groove. In 1984 Barrington Levy’s smooth-voiced dancehall ode to smoking ganja sounds surprisingly laidback for a song that clocks in at 151 BPMs. “Murder She Wrote’s” heavily digitized beat allows it to be easily mixed in with anything from old school hip-hop to UK garage. The song was a hit in the UK and Jamaica when it was first released in 1994 and thanks in part to the artists performing it with Alicia Keys at a 2007 awards show, it’s stood the test of time well. “Murder She Wrote” is a song about a girl named Maxine whose “beauty was like a bunch of rose,” although in actual fact, she has “a pretty face and bad character.” The song is constructed around a bouncing, driving digital dancehall rhythm that serves as the perfect vehicle for the hooky vocal exchanges of roughneck MC Chaka Demus and velvety smooth vocalist Pliers. “Murder She Wrote” by Chaka Demus and Pliers Here now are six party rocking anthems from dancehall’s golden era, which no DJ should be without.ġ. Even today, dancehall endures with acts like Sean Paul and Elephant Man currently carrying the torch.
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It’s dancehall’s digital format that has given it more longevity than other forms of reggae, with a heyday that lasted from the late ‘70s through the mid ‘90s. But dancehall really came into its own in the early ‘80s when it went digital.
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It initially emerged in the late ‘70s as a leaner, bouncier version of the roots reggae sound that was popular at the time. Murder She Wrote has been sampled many times and according to Billboard, Omarion and company’s hit “is just one chapter of the history that followed ‘Murder She Wrote,’ which introduced a new style of dancehall.Dancehall is undoubtedly the most danceable subgenre reggae ever produced. To date, it has racked up close to 800 million views on YouTube. The song appeared on Omarion’s fourth studio album, Sex Playlist. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified 3X Platinum in the US. It also shared that “Chris Brown’s guest verse takes it one step further, tracing back the roots of the Omarion-fronted West Coast anthem to the Caribbean by name-dropping Chaka Demus and Pliers’ redefining dancehall smash: “Murder she wrote/You wanna know how I know what I know?” Lines from the opening verse of the dancehall duo’s internationally renowned hit single, as well as the hook “murder she wrote”, were interpolated in the 2014 song which featured Chris Brown and Jhene Aiko.īillboard in their article noted that “the entire “Post to Be” pre-chorus swipes the melody and rhythm from the classic “Murder She Wrote” “I know this little girl, her name is Maxine…” section. Recently Billboard, in commemorating what it described as “the art of the interpolation at its most successful”, listed in no specific order, its 50 picks for the best examples of the form from the 21 st century, which it said “crossed genres and generations to revive old classics and make new ones”. Chaka Demus and Pliers’ 1992 hit Murder She Wrote which was featured in American singer Omarion’s hit song Post to Be, has been listed among Billboard Magazine’s “50 Best Song Interpolations of the 21st Century”.Īccording to a 2018 article from Rolling Stone Magazine, interpolation is a sort of ‘borrowing’ in music in which an artiste “employs a snippet of an already-recorded song in the creation of something new.”