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Like a version >> From King Tubby to Mad Professor, U-Roy is the original wrapper by CHRIS YURKIW
Nineties translation: U-Roy wasn't the first Jamaican "deejay" to both play records and chat freestyle over the music--advertisements, sound-system IDs, or whatever party banter that would come into his head. He had his own mentors in figures like King Stitt, Lord Comic and Count Matchukie. But U-Roy, né Ewart Beckford in Jones Town, was the first to take his dancehall flow into the studio and lay it down on wax. He would just coast right on top of an already-recorded hit, over the instrumental bits, et voilà: deejay music went legit in late '60s Jamaica, and rap had its O.G.--original godfather. Admittedly, U-Roy's old "rapping" is a far cry from what we now know in the institution of hip hop, but it's not a great leap from his talking over songs to early hip hop hits like "Rapper's Delight"--basically rapping over the backing track of Chic's "Good Times"--or even latter-day stuff like Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise," the base of which is a macro-sample of a Stevie Wonder song. And hip hop historians know all too well that one of the first Bronx rap DJs was Cool Herc, a Jamaican émigré. "You feel the vibe of the music and you make certain talk," says U-Roy, "and you say whatever you feel like saying, you know? So I never thought anything too big was going to come from that. And now people are rapping and doing that kind of stuff, so it's like, 'Man this is really exciting!'" Everyone knows about dub "versions" of songs, invented circa 1968 by one of U-Roy's old sound system employers, King Tubby. But there were also deejay "versions" of songs too, and after U-Roy held down the top two positions on the Jamaican charts in early 1970 with "Wake The Town (And Tell the People)" and "(This Station) Rules The Nation," any self-respecting hit was accompanied by a deejay version. So a dub version would have no vocals, but a deejay version would have double vocals--the original on the recording and the deejay (more like our MC) overtop. Properly, U-Roy is an old-schooler when it comes to dub. "People think that it's something that takes out the voice and leaves just the rhythm, but it wasn't like that. It was always the two versions [played back to back]: the vocal and the rhythm." When U-Roy got pissed at all the folks who later picked up on his style--Big Youth, I-Roy, Prince Jazzbo--he used to say, "Others imitate, but I originate." He even went into semi-retirement for a few years. But a comeback in '75 and a string of classic rockers-rhythm albums like Dread in a Babylon, Natty Rebel and Rasta Ambassador gave him a new career (his last three albums have been produced by second-generation dubstar Mad Professor), even though he considers himself to this day a "deejay" over a singer. "It's like, hey," says Daddy U-Roy, "someone had to start something. And it's an honour for me to know that I started something, or I did something that people appreciated so much that other people would imitate it, you know what I mean? I don't have a problem with that. I'm just happy for all the rappers and DJs or whatever it might be." With Ken Booth + John Holt + Lord Tanymo at Rainbow 9pm, doors 7pm, Saturday, Dec. 6. $20 advance, $25 door
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"I was the deejay at a dance," says U-Roy, explaining how he came in as an upstart teen in the Jamaican sound systems of the mid-'60s. "I was the one who put the record on the turntable with my mic in my hand, and I'd say, 'Yeah, you're being entertained by Dr. Dickie's Dynamic, and this is Ken Booth with "Train's Coming," or whatever.' Yeah, that's what I used to do!"