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Tuesday 17 January 2017

When Rai Met Reggae

Back in 2001, some bright spark had the idea of getting some rai and reggae artists together to collaborate. They managed to get some pretty big names involved - the likes of Khaled, Gregory Isaacs and Sly & Robbie - and the upshot was an album called "Big Men".

Unfortunately the results are not as entertaining as they would think they could have been. This could be because - from what I can gather from the sleeve notes - the Algerians did their bits in Paris then sent them over to Kingston for the Jamaicans to add to (and vice versa). Still, it has its moments.

"Life" - Larbi Dida & U Roy

"A Love I Can Feel" - Tarik & Chevelle Franklin

As far as I know the experiment wasn't repeated, so nobody had to work out what name to give to an exciting new "genre". Rai-Reggae? Reggae-Rai? Rai-ggae? I have no idea what to call it, but I do know that its not reggae like it used to be.

1 comment:

  1. I will beat CharityChic to this: that Paul Nicholas tune is not his best, certainly not as good as Grandma's Party

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