Bob Marley and the Wailers were one of the biggest music acts in the world in the 1970s and early '80s, but a dark cloud overshadowed international reggae after Robert Nesta Marley died on May 11, 1981.
While a global audience of reggae lovers mourned Marley's loss, reggae continued to flourish as the decade unfolded. New artists and trends sprouted from Jamaica and went worldwide in the first half of the '80s; by the middle of the decade reggae had changed forever.
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1985 saw the advent of early digital technology which allowed Jamaican producers to experiment with new sounds, culminating in a seismic change in the way reggae was produced. The dancehall DJs who had previously chatted over instrumentals of popular reggae hits began rhyming over bespoke electronic productions (or riddims). And, with the likes of Barrington Levy as inspiration, the singjay emerged — a new style of performer combining dancehall rhyming with smooth Jamaican vocals.
Reggae’s position on the global music stage was confirmed with the launch of the GRAMMY Award for Best Reggae Recording in 1985. The award's first recipient — Black Uhuru’s Anthem — owed its success to both roots reggae and the arrival of new technology.
Four decades after this auspicious year, GRAMMY.com explores why 1985 was a pivotal point in reggae history.
Reggae Arrived At The GRAMMYs
Initially named the Award for Best Reggae Recording, the Category acknowledged the genre’s distinctive cultural identity, artistic contribution, and mainstream legitimacy.
Nominees for the inaugural award included albums from Black Uhuru (Anthem), Peter Tosh (Captured Live) and Yellowman (King Yellowman), alongside singles by Jimmy Cliff (Reggae Night) and Steel Pulse (Steppin’ Out), with Anthem coming out on top.
"Forty years ago I did not realise how big the GRAMMY was," former Black Uhuru member Mykal Rose told The Jamaica Observer. " I was just making conscious songs and praising Jah. I had no idea how winning a GRAMMY Award impacted the music industry."
Refined to concentrate on full-length sets, the Category was renamed Best Reggae Album by the 1992 GRAMMYs. The accolade has since become a landmark in the international reggae calendar.
Sly And Robbie Entered A New Era Of Production
By 1985, drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare had cemented their position as reggae’s foremost session musicians and producers. When Island Records label founder Chris Blackwell built his Compass Point recording studio in the Bahamas in 1977, he appointed the duo as heads of the studio’s in-house band and resident producers.
Recorded at Compass Point, Black Uhuru’s Anthem album gave Sly and Robbie the chance to explore new ideas. This was a state-of-the-art recording complex, equipped with cutting-edge technology, something that excited Dunbar in particular. The new Uhuru project gave him the chance to experiment, and he utilized Simmons synthesizer drum pads (syndrums for short) and the LinnDrum and Roland TR-808 drum machines in addition to using his analog kit during the recording sessions. Brought in as co-producers, the spacey, electronic sound effects Paul "Groucho" Smykle and Steven Stanley added during the set’s mixing stages helped give the album a more contemporary, crossover sound.
Anthem was the fifth Black Uhuru album Sly and Robbie worked on, and they understood how the band’s ethos relied on tight vocal harmonies and politically conscious lyricism. These values were kept firmly in place on the set as the pair brought in ideas from other musical sources. Anthem was the first Uhuru album to feature a horn section, headed by prolific Jamaican saxophonist Dean Fraser. The rocky guitar licks introduced by longtime Sly and Robbie collaborator Daryl Thompson appealed to American and European audiences. And, most importantly, Sly and Robbie’s use of new digital instrumentation and production technology on the album bridged roots reggae with the emerging digital dancehall sound.\
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As Black Uhuru received their 1985 GRAMMY for Anthem, Sly and Robbie were already working with the group on their follow-up album, Brutal, as well as playing on tracks for Bunny Wailer’s forthcoming Liberation album and applying their new synthesized production sound to Ini Kamoze’s third set for Island Records, Pirate. The duo also found time to record and produce two albums under their own names during the same year. The Sting, their collection of TV and movie film themes cover versions, was a diverting listen. However, Electro Reggae Vol. 1 (recorded as The Taxi Gang), epitomized the punchy, vibrant electronica that was driving reggae music forward.
Barrington Levy Released Here I Come
Nicknamed the "Mellow Canary" for his warbling, melodic vocals, Barrington Levy had developed a singing style that linked the scatting skills of the dancehall DJ with the more soulful vocals of the likes of Gregory Isaacs. Despite releasing more than 30 albums in his career, his 1985 album Here I Come that has had the most profound effect on reggae music’s development.
Here I Come included two stone-cold classics. Featuring the boastful line, "I’m broad, I’m broad. I’m broader than Broadway," Levy’s lilting take on the title track has resounded across the years — from underpinning Salaam Remi’s remix of the Fugees’ "Ready or Not," to Black Eyes Peas’ 2010 track "The Coming." It even figured in the 2004 video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."
The album’s ganja-themed "Under Mi Sensi" track has had a similar impact, cropping up on the 2012 remix of Chief Keef’s "I Don’t Like", DJ Khaled’s "Where You Come From" from 2021, and elsewhere. "Under Mi Sensi" provided a rich mine of lyrical and instrumental samples for future jungle, drum’n’bass, hip-hop and EDM producers, as well as kickstarting reggae’s next leap forward.
The amalgamation of singer and DJ styles encapsulated on the Here I Come signalled the arrival of the singjay. This new form of performer would soon take flight as up-and-coming performers like Tenor Saw and Nitty Gritty took Levy’s melding of reggae styles to new levels in the dancehall.
Bobby Digital Was Born
Lloyd James (nicknamed Prince Jammy by Bunny "Striker" Lee) started out as an electronics technician before dub pioneer King Tubby employed him to replace departing studio engineer Philip Smart in the late 1970s. By the mid-1980s, the Prince had become a King, having demonstrated his unerring ear for top-quality sound while cutting dubs for Tubby and Lee.
After establishing his own studio and label in 1985, Jammy called in young producer Robert Dixon to help him behind the mixing desk. Dixon’s grasp of digital technology was so immediate that Jammy began calling him Bobby Digital.
After establishing his Digital B label in 1988, Bobby Digital went on to become one of the most important producers in modern reggae’s history, producing albums for Shabba Ranks (including two GRAMMY-winning sets: 1992’s As Raw As Ever and X-Tra Naked from 1993), Cocoa Tea, Sizzla, Morgan Heritage, Richie Spice and more.
Reggae Went Digital With Sleng Teng
When young Jamaican musician Noel Davey was gifted a Casio MT-40 in 1984, he tested the keyboard’s preset sounds with his friend, up-and-coming singer Wayne Smith. After stumbling across the Casio’s "rock’n’roll bass" preset, the pair recorded the bouncing rhythm — with Smith singing lyrics based on "Under Mi Sensi"— and took the results to King Jammy. Now fully conversant in digital technology, Jammy molded the recording into Wayne Smith’s 1985 single "Under Mi Sleng Teng," creating reggae’s first fully digital riddim in the process.
The track’s overnight success opened the floodgates, as producers Bobby Digital, Steely and Clevie, Gussie Clarke and more also began using digital dynamism in their work. Sleng Teng has gone on to leave an indelible historical mark. It is estimated that there are more than 450 reggae versions of the riddim, with Cypress Hill, UB40, Prodigy and countless others using elements of Sleng Teng in their tracks.
SL2’s 1992 single,"Way in My Brain" (essentially a breakbeat version of "Under Mi Sleng Teng") was used in the 2021 TV commercial announcing Facebook’s rebranding as Meta. Sleng Teng even reached Hollywood — the soundtrack for the 1988 movie, She’s Having A Baby, featured a Dr Calculus track built around the riddim.
Ragga Took Over
"Under Mi Sleng Teng" ushered in a new era for reggae where digital riddims and a new breed of dancehall DJ came together.
Originally an insult used by the colonizing British to describe scruffy, poverty-stricken Caribbean islanders, "ragamuffin" had been reclaimed by the 1980s to mean tough and streetwise in Jamaican patois. It was fitting, then, that raggamuffin (note the extra "g") was now used to describe Jamaica’s latest, hard-sounding musical turn. Rude boy subculture emerged from Jamaica’s sound system network during the 1960s, as disenfranchised young people from the island’s poorer districts gravitated towards gang membership and violence. Raggamuffin — quickly shortened to "ragga" — culture had grown from similar roots, giving a voice to Jamaican youth’s social and political frustrations in the 1980s.
Ragga’s lyrical content could be contentious as performers incorporated "slackness" (sexually explicit imagery) and stories of drug dealing, gun violence and homophobia into their tracks. However, artists including Lieutenant Stitchie, Admiral Bailey and Tony Rebel in Jamaica and Tippa Irie and Smiley Culture in the U.K. took more palatable routes. As ragga became more widely known as dancehall, the way had been paved for the next wave of ragga-inspired superstars, from Beenie Man and Sean Paul to Chaka Demus and Pliers and Shaggy.