Toppa Top 10: Reggae/Dancehall’s Greatest One-Hit Wonders

Words by Eddie STATS Houghton and Jesse Serwer

As with any other nation or genre, the last-half century of Jamaican music, from ska and rocksteady to reggae and dancehall, is littered with hit records from artists who seemingly emerged from nowhere, only to immediately fade back into obscurity. Perhaps more common, though, are artists whose stories appear to be explainable this way, but are actually much more complicated. The following are a few of those.

10. Dirtsman, “Hot This Year”

Dirtsman’s one-hit story is tragic rather than comical, but it must be told. Still young in the dancehall game, he met with considerable success after recording “Hot This Year” (it’s still an easy forward in nightclubs worldwide) with New York soundman Philip Smart, and was promptly signed to a major label deal on BMG. A 1993 shooting at his home in Jamaica put an untimely end to his career however—an all too common story in reggae. In that sense, he is a brother-in-arms to Pan Head, also lost to gun violence the very same year. His lasting hit “Punny Printer” is roughly equal to his other great dancehall legacy; inspiring his good friend Buju Banton—who eulogized him on the stand out 45 “Murderer”–to renounce slackness and gun lyrics and turn to Rastafari.

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.

8. Enur featuring Natasja, “Calabria”

Although this song is officially credited to producer Enur, the catchy Latin horns on the riddim track of “Calabria” would never have found their international dancefloor legs if not combine with the chat of Natasja “Lickle Tasha” I had the good fortune to meet Natasja in 2005 at Tivoli Gardens’ legendary Passa Passa dance while traveling with her longtime friend Martei Korley, who happens to be the visual director of this site. Though something of a cypher outside her native Denmark—and JA, where she gained attention by winning talent contests—she was a great and versatile deejay with a bright future that was sadly cut short by a fatal 2007 car accident in Jamaica, just about the time her version of “Calabria” was gaining momentum as a worldwide hit.

7/6. Lumidee, “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)”/Kevin Lyttle, “Turn Me On”

The explosion in dancehall’s popularity and visibility in the early 2000s resulted in numerous hits, including several by non-reggae artists hailing from elsewhere in the Caribbean. Few songs capture the cross-cultural energy of that era more succinctly than Spanish Harlem-raised, Puerto Rican-American singer Lumidee’s “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh),” one of the biggest hits (along with Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” and Wayne Wonder’s “No Letting Go” on the era-defining Diwali riddim. Meanwhile, Vincentian soca singer Kevin Lyttle found his way into every mainstream DJ’s dancehall set (and the playlist of every R&B/hip-hop station worldwide) with the dance mix of his soca tune “Turn Me On.” Originally recorded in 2001, the tune had a loooong commercial shelf life, impacting England in 2003 before crossing over to the US (where it reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100) the following year.

5. Snow, “Informer”

Despite his perceived cultural inauthenticity, Snow actually scored a comeback hit in Jamaica in 1995 with his “All-Star Cast” remix of his “Anything But You,” featuring Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Nadine Sutherland, Terror Fabulous, Louie Culture and Kulture Knox (Read our DJ Autograph’s account of discovering the song in Kingston here). To reggae fans around the world, though, he’s still seen as the “Imposter” from Jim Carrey’s In Living Color spoof.

4. Millie Small, “My Boy Lollipop”

“My Boy Lollipop” was the first worldwide hit to come out of Jamaica and is often credited as the song that started the Jamaican music revolution of the 1960s. The early ska hit was also the release that launched Chris Blackwell’s Island Records empire, and, as seen above, certainly the first song to get a Caribbean artist on Finnish TV. While Small continued to record and perform into the early 1970s, a second hit eluded her.

3. Dawn Penn, “You Don’t Love Me (No No No)”

Dawn Penn used to be a one-hit wonder in the truest sense, having disappeared from the music scene for nearly two decades after a short ’60s career that culminated in the Studio One classic “You Don’t Love Me” (a/k/a “No No No”). But then Penn re-emerged in the ’90s, and had a second, massive hit: this time with a new, dancehall-friendly version of her signature hit, produced by Steely & Clevie. Unlike your typical one-hit wonder, Penn has actually traveled in some new musical directions since re-emerging. But if all she ever did was put out another new version of the pitch-perfect “No No No” every other year, we wouldn’t mind at all.

2. Musical Youth, “Pass The Dutchie”

Yes. Musical Youth made a coupled great albums with tons of great songs (take it from me, I am the one cat who probably has their entire recorded output in vinyl, cassette and digital formats). But “Pass The Dutchie” is one of those chartbusting phenoms that justify “One Hit Wonder” countdowns in the largest spheres of pop music, let alone reggae. The youths had a very narrow window to follow up with another freakily successful smash before their voices changed and their universal little-kids-playing-instruments appeal faded. A cover of Desmond Dekker’s “007 (Shanty Town)” did it for me. But not for them.

1. Michie One & Louchie Lou “Rich Girl”

“Rich Girl” may be the ultimate dancehall one-off. An interpolation of the unforgettable “If I Were A Rich Man” melody from Fiddler on the Roof, over the Fever Pitch—a bass-heavy UK answer to Sly & Robbie’s bhangra-inflected Murder She Wrote riddim—the tune contained the perfect combination of elements for both crossover appeal and dancehall immortality. However, it’s eminently recognizable hook made licensing problematic—presumably the necessary clearances for a UK recording (as opposed to JA, where ‘adapted’ is sufficient to indicate fair use of a copyrighted song) made a video shoot and radio promotion financially impossible. That left the song to become a hit a second time around when recycled by a producer with deeper pockets. That would be Dr. Dre, who remade it for Gwen Stefani and Eve’s cover cover version. Michie One and Luchie Lou attempted other weird dancehall remakes and found bigger video budgets but never the same level of catchiness.

(Dis)Honorebel Mention

Big Mountain, “Baby I Love Your Way”

A proper roll call of reggae/dancehall one-hit wonders is too lengthy to ponder, but we thought this one deserved a special mention. We’re still not quite sure what it was about this version of Peter Frampton’s ’70s schmaltz ballad “Baby, I Love Your Way” that the American (and British!) masses connected with (as opposed to the numerous other schmaltzy reggae covers that have been hoisted on its collective earspace) in 1994. But in an era that was defined by artists with inexplicably popular one-off hits (Remember this one?), this is one of the most inexplicable, if only for its overwhelming mundaneness.