Words by Eddie STATS Houghton and Jesse Serwer—
We first compiled a Toppa Top 10 list of spooky reggae jams back in 2010, when LargeUp was just getting ready for our first Halloween. (We went as the Best Dressed Chicken in Town, naturally). Considering the darkness that descended on dancehall a year ago and the time that’s elapsed since that last countdown, we thought we’d dig up the casket of reggae classics dealing with duppies, ghosts, vampires, zombies and other undead creatures, and see if we couldn’t give the corpse some new life.
As former LargeUp editor (and current Okayplayer honch0) Eddie STATS Houghton put it back then:
The truly scary thing was how many classic reggae tunes there are that fall into this ghoulish category once you start um, digging. Maybe there are heaps of spooky soca and merengue jams we just don’t know about but it certainly seems like the supernatural is a recurring theme in Kingston, a town that has produced crews called Monster Shack and Scare Dem–not to mention Ghost!