Have you heard the new Missy Elliot CD? What about Christina Milian's lead single, Dip It Low, from her new album? Or pop princess Christina Aguilera's second single, Can't Hold Us Down, from her platinum-selling album, Stripped? What about track number three, (Oh No) What You Got, on the platinum-selling album Justified by Justin Timberlake, another member of pop's royal family?
News Source: Jamaica Observer
Not to mention the new Winterfresh chewing gum commercial! If you have heard even half of these tracks, and did some investigation on the production credits, you would agree that Jamaican dancehall producers are missing the boat.
It happened a decade ago, when Ace of Base and UB40 were riding the reggae wave far better than we, the creators of the music ever did. And yet again, the top foreign acts are minting money using Jamaican music, without employing our home-grown producers to get the Jamaican sound. Instead they select the hip-hop producers, like Timbaland and Scott Storch, to recreate our sound, and rhythms, many of whom have no interest in collaborating with Jamaican producers.
So history repeats itself, as if we, the founders of the music, never learned anything from the past. I have questioned a few hip-hop producers and executives in the American music industry on their reasons for excluding the Jamaican producers in their projects and have found similar themes in their responses. Many just have a cocky attitude and feel they can do what our producers do, just as well, or better. A lot of the equipment used in dancehall and in hip-hop is the same - most notably, the MPC drum machine, which provides the bulk of our signature sounds, facilitating the replication.
Producers claim that their projects happen so quickly they don't have time to go to Jamaica to find producers and develop a rapport and comfort level to facilitate working together. Others complain that our producers have been too suspicious, and difficult to work with, or are too tardy in their delivery times. But a common theme to me seems to be the well-worn phrase: "Out of sight, out of mind".
Full Story: More from Jamaica Observer
