CHUNE

Riddim: Stalag (1994)

Producer: Bobby “Digital” Dixon

This Friday, Greensleeves Records will be dropping some unreleased (and new-to-streaming) Cocoa Tea songs to celebrate Valentine’s Day. But while the singer has no shortage of lover’s material in his illustrious catalog, I’ll always hold a place in my heart for this indelible clash tune.

It’s not just Bobby Digital’s take on the Stalag riddim (an earlier version of which we’ve already covered here). It’s not just that stunning opening verse warning competing sounds:

Hey Mr. Undertaker, build dem a coffin
No no no, my mistake, make that two
Seh one fi dem selector, and one fi dem owner, lawdy lawdy
Can’t you see that my sound is taking over

(That undertaker line comes from the old Sergio Leone Western A Fistful of Dollars, when Clint Eastwood tells the undertaker to get three coffins ready—then, after he draws down on the Rojos, amends his count. The spaghetti Western aesthetic was the ’80s dancehall equivalent of the mafioso tropes that came to dominate hip-hop a decade later; we’ll get into more of those tunes soon.)

It’s also that outro, which he lifts from Peter Tosh’s loping 1976 song “Burial”:

Dem want I, want I, fi come a dem funeral
Come claim seh, come claim seh, a dem a di general…

As I’ve said, the sweetest voices sometimes deliver the coldest sentiments. Hard to top this one.

Additional listening:

• A young Cocoa broke out with “Rocking Dolly,” which celebrates young ladies’ favorite dance move of the moment, eclipsing all other moves: dem throw away the water pumpee/dem dash away the cool & deadly/dem no waan no electric boogie…
• Peter Tosh, “Burial”
• Tosh performing “Burial” live in Switzerland in 1979