The Spanish Fly riddim - see Vybz Kartel's "Roll Deep" and Tubby T's "Ready She Ready" especially - sums up pretty much everything I like (or rather, love obsessively) about current dancehall: its slithering, slimy tropicalia keyboards bleeping in and over and under and around the stiff-jointed islander beats, shudderingly and compulsively
physical but so sunny and so
pop at the same time. I imagine some tropical paradise constructed on a satellite orbiting the earth, tanned-skin revellers smoking joints and sipping cocktails under palm trees while bits of astral rock debris float past. Has there ever been a style of music which sucks up the entirety of popular culture so greedily, and yet remains so resolutely itself?
