CHUNE

Riddim: Night Nurse (1997)

Producer: Jimmy Riley

I’m always a sucker for back-in-the-day reminiscing, and this one is an old head’s paradise. Anthony B never quite achieved the prominence of Sizzla or Capleton, who also hail from the Bobo Ashanti sect of Rastafarianism (and about whom much will be written on this here blog), but he’s always been able to sing and DJ with equal facility, with his catalog split between conscious tunes and fiya-pon-everything aggression¹. Here, over one of early dancehall’s most recognizable riddims, he bemoans how the scene has gone from dancing to danger:

We waan back, we water pumpee
We cool and deadly, fi go dance wi we ladies
Dem a dance yah too funky
Gunshot a buss di yute dem get jumpy…

Additional Listening:

• Gregory Isaacs, “Night Nurse”—the Cool Ruler’s best-known song, and one that launched a thousand seduction playlists.

• Anthony B performs “Waan Back” live in 2010 (when “back” was even backer than it was in 1997, when the song first came out)

• Anthony B, “Dus Dem Out,” a personal favorite from the aggression side of his dossier. Bobby Konders (New York stand up!) had a winner with the Dun Dem riddim, if you ask me.

1. Which is arguably just another strain of conscious, though its ingrained homophobia ages like milk. ↩︎