5. Super Cat
Oh shit – when I see this now, I’m seeing the merge between America and Jamaica. Reggae and hip-hop. The songs mentioned so far haven’t been reggae, but it’s always been the first music I’ve known, due to my parents and the culture I’m from. So when I heard this, I heard a merge of the two, because a lot of this other stuff that I’ve been talking about that’s been influencing me was English or American. When I heard this, I was seeing a reggae crossover because this particular song wasn’t a reggae song; it was a pop song in my eyes. It was just so catchy and so cool to see Caribbean people that I could relate to – Super Cat looked like my uncles. So seeing that on TV was fascinating, and seeing the worlds of reggae and hip-hop merge made me see that there was a scope for different things. Different, as in you don’t have to just stay in one genre, like if you’re an R&B singer you only get to do that and you only work with R&B artists. I saw that people could work together and make different products and stuff like that, and it was really interesting.
I first saw this on MTV as well. Heavy D was a rapper but on this song he showed his roots are in reggae as well. That was really interesting because a lot of people in my generation, especially Caribbean people, have roots that are in reggae, but when they go out and look for things to get into, reggae is the last thing that they would choose. It’s weird.
