10. Busy Signal – “Same Way”
We started off 2013 by asking the question, “Will 2013 be Busy Signal’s year?” in our very first post in January. The deejay had just emerged from his short prison stay in the U.S. with an impressive appearance at Sting and an onslaught of wicked late-2012 tunes like “Mystery History,” and would soon kick off his own 2K13 with the wicked “Bad Up Who.”
Though he didn’t quite reach the Vybz-level cult hero status we’ve been expecting him to, Hott Ed had, arguably, his biggest year to date, reaching No. 1 in several countries (Denmark!) with his Major Lazer collaboration, “Watch Out For This (Bumaye)”; scoring another reggae hit with the late-blooming Reggae Music Again tune “Royal Night”; and effortlessly conjuring Shabba on the throwback tune “Bedroom Bully.”
But Busy’s most interesting maneuver might have been recognizing the dancehall-ness of Ghanian rapper Sarkodie’s azonto hit “U Go Kill Me,” a major hit in West Africa, and also the U.K. If the original didn’t already sound like dancehall to your ears, Busy—a master at straddling and combining Caribbean and African sounds—effortlessly turned it into something you could easily have thought originated in Jamaica. —Jesse Serwer