9. Ronnie Twaite “Wickedest Time”
If you are not from Jamaica or a dancehall selector by trade you might not recognize neither the artist nor the title of this song. But “Wickedest Time” AKA “Mr. Luxury” is right up there with “Bam Bam,” “One Blood” and “Ring the Alarm” with the illest dancehall melodies of all time (and like some of the other hits on here, it would later gain a second life, in this case with with Born Jamericans’ interpolation “Boom Shak A Tak”) To truly understand its impact you’d have to have been present when Twaite took the stage at the Super Cat and Shabba Ranks stageshow at NYC’s Amazura nightclub. On a stage filled with legends (and a capacity crowd of potential bottle-throwers) “Wickedest Time” received easily the biggest forward of the night a scant three bars into the opening stanza—the kind of explosion that only happens in those rare split seconds when musical appreciation meets oh-shot recognition….and then that was it. There is no other arrow in Ronnie Twaite’s quiver to draw for.