Toppa Top 10: Sly Dunbar Selects 10 Sly + Robbie Classics

Words by Midnight Raver
Photo by Martei Korley

In last week’s Toppa Top 10, we brought you our picks for Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare’s deadliest riddims. This week, we went straight to the source and asked Sly for his own picks. Here, reggae’s greatest drummer tells us about the sessions behind some of his favorite rhythm tracks with Robbie and the Taxi Gang.

Read on here—you might be surprised by a few of his picks.

10. No-Madzz – “Romance”

SLY SAYS: “[No-Maddz] are cool man, they are some cool guys. So they came to check me one day, the singer who plays guitar — Oneil. I say you know my friend has been telling me about you, because a lot of people believe they couldn’t really sing. So I had an audition with them. So I said come up and sing some songs mek mi hear, and they sang, and I said ‘Wow! that’s good.’ I’m gonna record you next week, and they couldn’t believe it. I say yeah, man.”

9. Revolutionaries/Tapper Zukie – “MPLA”

8. Chaka Demus and Pliers – “Murder She Wrote”

SLY SAYS: “It wasn’t Bam Bam riddim like you say, no. ‘Murder She Wrote’ was a kind of mento song I was making. The original ‘Murder She Wrote’ riddim is an instrumental called ‘Santa Barbara.’ ‘Santa Barbara’ have two parts, a piano part. [He hums it…] What we did was run it and re-record it again, and run it right through the track. And then we call Chaka Demus, because he was always asking me for a ride to go on, so we put him on it. It wasn’t no ‘Bam Bam’ riddim. Dat one ‘original’ riddim.”

7. Sly & Robbie – “Unmetered Taxi”

6. Sly Dunbar – Rasta Fiesta

5. Ini Kamoze – “World-A-Music”

SLY SAYS: “What happen it was myself, Robbie Lyn and Willie Lindo and Robbie, we create the riddim and see how it feel. Dis one an’ original riddim.”

4. Dennis Brown – “Revolution”

SLY SAYS: “That was original, and the vocal you hear on it is a rough vocal. He didn’t voice the voice on it, it’s original. I just use the clap from the 808 machine, but everything else was live. Myself, Robbie and Robbie Lyn, and then I went in and overdub the clap you hear, just to make it different. Yes it’s the same sound from the Ini Kamoze tune (“Trouble You a Trouble Me”) using an 808 Roland machine.”

3. Black Uhuru – “Sinsemilla”

2. Black Uhuru – “World is Africa”

SLY SAYS: “It’s funny how sometimes one riddim can consist of so many parts. You turn it around and you get a different riddim, you flip it over, you get a different riddim. That riddim is like a ‘swing’ riddim. We were playing reggae against it. (Mykal Rose) hums ‘The Whole World is Africa’ and we were just grooving. Once the groove is locked, we just check it and record it, and that’s it.”

1. Gregory Isaacs – “Soon Forward”

SLY SAYS: “Soon Forward was like the first Number 1 hit we got. When we decide to start up production, Robbie checked Gregory, and came in and did some songs, and that was the first. It’s kind of taken the sound of Taxi music, the sound of Sly and Robbie music. That’s the sound right there.”