Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Boom Year For Jamaican Music

A big month and a big year for Jamaican music already. Today, there’s news that Sean Paul’s The Trinity had the biggest reggae debut ever–107,000 copies sold, #7 on Billboard’s Top 200, #4 on R&B, and #1 at Reggae.

Check this: He broke the previous record, which was set two weeks before by Damian Marley’s Welcome to Jamrock, with 85,000 (also #7 on the Top 200).

A boom year dat.

The great thing for us longtime Jamaican music lovers is that these albums are very different from each other–so perhaps there is a spectrum opening up in US audiences for a broader range of Jamaican and Caribbean artists.

We’ll see.

Some revisions and some non-revisions on earlier posts are in order:

+ Welcome to Jamrock is the best Marley album ever by someone not named Bob. I’ve had my earlier words for breakfast already.

+ Sean Paul’s record was pretty good after all–even though the video was obviously a rush job–and the wait clearly didn’t hurt the record at all.

+ I Wayne’s album is still way overrated.

+ Why do people still sleep on Morgan Heritage?

posted by Jeff Chang @ 7:42 am | 3 Comments

3 Responses to “Boom Year For Jamaican Music”

mr says:

October 7, 2005 at 9:58 pm

Is “Welcome to Jamrock” even better than Ziggy Marley’s “Conscious Party?”
erin says:

October 13, 2005 at 4:48 am

Sure, I-Wayne’s album is overrated, but it’s really about the singles. “Lava Ground” is amazing, and “Living In Love” is one of the best tunes of the past few years. A couple of months ago you wrote something about I-Wayne not being “the next Sizzla”. I agree–but it’s because I-Wayne is simply not the same type of artist. He’s a conscious singer who’ll never do dancehall. The only reason you can talk album with Sean Paul and Jr. Gong is because their albums have been carefully packaged for the international audience-an audience that doesn’t still buy 45s. You’ve gotta start thinking singles with most reggae–especially reggae that hasn’t hit the big time (i.e. folks who haven’t sung with Beyonce or who aren’t related to Bob)…
Jeff says:

October 13, 2005 at 6:55 am

hey yall, yeah i do think the jamrock lp is better than conscious party which hasn’t aged well IMHO. re: i-wayne, you know what it is for me? i’m not into his eek-a-mouse-meets-horace-andy voice and he’s incredibly harsh on women–a strange combination for me. i don’t know if sizzla’s dame dash record will be the real thing. it seems like lots of folks commenting here don’t hold much hope for it. i would like to see a new richie spice record soon tho…

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