Eddie Ranks: Eddie Murphy’s Top Five Caribbean Moments

Words by LargeUp

When video of Eddie Murphy’s reggae single “Red Light” with Snoop turned up online last month (the one you saw on LargeUp first), it threw a lot of people for a loop. WTFs were heard all around.

While we stopped short of outright endorsing the unexpected track, we got it, though. Our crew is united in a deep-rooted affinity for Eddie, the definitive comedian and movie star of our youth. And, as massive Eddie fans, we know he’s been dabbling in Caribbean culture—and, yes, occasionally singing reggae—since his start on SNL. OK, his depictions of Caribbean folks have not always been flattering, but it’s clearly all done with love by a guy who isn’t Caribbean, as far as we know, but grew up in the orbit of its culture. Dammit, my man shared the stage at Reggae Sunsplash with Shabba Ranks, in ’92, no less… so top that, Snoop.

Here’s a look at some of our five favorite Caribbean-inspired moments from a massively funny dude with a marginally decent singing voice.

UPDATE: Eddie’s done it again! Listen to his new reggae track “O Jah Jah” here + read what he had to say about reggae, Chronixx, performing + more in LargeUp editor Jesse Serwer’s interview for Rolling Stone.

5.”I Make Love to You” (Eddie Murphy Raw, 1987)

One of the most memorable monologues from Raw, Eddie’s classic live standup film, concerns women’s preferences for cheating. Eddie illustrates this with a yarn illustrating a theoretical girlfriend’s plan to take a break from an insensitive boyfriend by visiting the Bahamas alone.

As Eddie tells it, “the moon is shimmying off the ocean, your woman’s crying…and all the sudden a dude named Dexter walks up… Dexter St. Jacques…he walk[s] up swingin’ his dick”—Eddie swings his microphone around at extremely wide intervals—”…then he do that smooth Bahamas shit on your woman.” Slipping into a generic West Indian accent, Eddie also shows love and appreciation for Bob Marley, singing lines from “Could This Be Love” and “I Shot the Sheriff.” Eddie continues, “He rolls one of them big Bahamas joints, puts some of that Bob Marley music on…and Bob be preaching. ‘Don’t let em fool ya…'” Sounds kinda like the plot of a late-’90s chick flick now, doesn’t it?

4. Vampire In Brooklyn (1995)

Eight years after Raw, Eddie brought the vague accent—think West Indian equivalent of Akeem from Coming to America—back as Maximillian, the title character from the 1995 horror/comedy Vampire with Brooklyn.

Although generally considered one of his least successful movies, Vampire was a labor of love for Eddie, who wrote the screenplay with his brothers Charlie and Vernon, with characters based on people from their youth in BK. As Maximillian observes in the scene below: Brooklyn… I loooove dis place.

3. “Red Light” with Snoop Lion (2013)

Yeah, Eddie and Snoop’s stop-and-frisk-inspired culture tune isn’t the most musically inspired song we’ve ever heard. In fact, it’s a little weird, right down to the durag Eddie’s sporting in the clip. But it’s not as bad as this jerk made it out to seem. EDDIE KNOWS REGGAE.

2. “I Was A King” with Shabba Ranks (1992)

Ten years after he lampooned post-disco rap on “Boogie In Your Butt,” and seven after he hit the studio with Rick James for the (highly lampoonable) “Party All the Time,” Eddie made one more go at a singing career—and this time he seemed to be taking himself really, really seriously.  (See the shameless hippy-isms of his PM Dawn-jacking “Whatzupwitu,” the king of comedy’s surpsingly, but understandably, slept on collaboration with king of pop Michael Jackson.)

That same album, Love’s Alright, featured another high-powered collab in “If I Was a King” with dancehall’s then top shotta at that time, Shabba Ranks. Eddie even went to Jamaica to film the video, shot during his and Shabba’s performance at that year’s Reggae Sunsplash with a full Nyabinghi band.

1. “Kill The White People” (Saturday Night Live, Early ’80s)


The original and gold standard of joke reggae songs, this SNL nugget one came in at No. 1 on our list of such things from a few years back. Yeah, Ras Trent is hilarious but even Andy Samberg would admit his Trustafarian’s got nothing on Tyrone Green. As Eddie STATS wrote in our original analysis, like most of Eddie M’s musical impressions (Little Richard, James Brown), the spoof actually works as music. And also, it’s funny because it’s true. Don’t take our word for it. Here’s how Grantland’s Patrice Grant described it: “If there were a tournament bracket for best sketch ever (not just Murphy), this is the sleeper to bet on.” Seen?

Honorable Mention:
“Hit By A Car” (Eddie Murphy, 1982)

Eddie Murphy’s debut comedy album includes this monologue about being hit by a car on Brooklyn’s Bushwick Avenue, and the confusion that ensues. Adopting the voice of a motermouthed bystander who makes up a story to impress a crowd, Eddie recounts being run over by two West Indians, because they were playing Bob Marley too loud: You can’t hear shit when they’re listening to that, cause it’s got all that drums and cymbals…