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Don’t Blame Drake: Modern Dancehall Is
Built on Appropriation
By Justin Joffe • observer.com 09/08/16
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Jamaican dancehall artist Sean Paul was lamenting his fall from
grace in popularity, and the story notes that his 2014 album Full Frequency sold a paltry 5,000 copies
stateside. Paul has since left his label, gone independent, and plans to regain his station as an international
superstar. Part of what’s bothering him, though, is how pop artists are using dancehall without giving credit
to its origins:
“It is a sore point when people like Drake or Bieber or other artists come and do dancehall-orientated
music but don’t credit where dancehall came from and they don’t necessarily understand it,” said Paul. “A
lot of people get upset, they get sour. And I know artists back in Jamaica that don’t like Major Lazer
because they think they do the same thing that Drake and Kanye did—they take and take and don’t credit.”
Speaking as a representative of an authentic cultural tradition, Paul’s logic becomes a bit shaky. For one
thing, Paul collaborated with Major Lazer, the trio of Diplo, Jillionaire, and Walshy Fire, on ML’s 2014
single “Come On to Me”. If there’s any growing feeling in Jamaica that dancehall has been misused and
separated from the culture that birthed it, Sean Paul’s focus on being internationally known is the perfect
example of that.
However, Sean Paul is not the only one guilty of this. In the 1980s the Jamaican government made efforts
to allow their own artists to profit from their local styles of music, film and culture by creating companies to
help produce, manage and promote their homemade products. As a result, several dancehall artists began
mixing the local styles like rocksteady, reggae and dub which were native to Jamaica for more hip hop and
pop influenced production which were for more successful on the international market. As time went on,
dancehall moved further and further from its origins and the connection of this new hyper and aggressive
music back to the roots that inspired it was almost impossible to see.
That was when I considered the fact that modern dancehall artists have also stolen from their musical
forefathers, but abandoned their messages of peace and togetherness and instead succumbed to the same
level of inward-focused greed that Sean Paul today pulls off so effortlessly. I firmly believe that modern
dancehall artists, in burying the energy, spirit and essence of the greats who came before them, are
involved in the same type of behavior that Sean Paul has accused artists like Drake and Bieber of doing.
The Guardian piece also mentions Sean Paul’s frustration with the fact that many of the Jamaican
dancehall artists influencing these chart-toppers can’t get Visas to come to the U.S. to give them more
exposure to help their popularity. But whose government is responsible for that though, ultimately? Stories
from the past year suggest that the Jamaican government could be doing a much better job at helping their
artists travel around more. It’s a beautiful thing when the desire to spread art and achieve fame slowly
moves a country away from its long-held sense of cultural isolationism.
So maybe Sean Paul should concern himself less with promoting his own comeback or waving dancehall
around like a cultural purist, and instead just use his clout to focus more on getting his fellow artists on the
island the right to travel and make a name for themselves.