CHUNE

Riddim: Shank I Sheck

Producer: Junjo Lawes

Don’t even bother trying to choose a favorite song from an artist like King Yellowman. If you’re anything like me, it changes by the day. And today, it happens to be one of his slackness anthems. (Real talk, Too Short’s “Freaky Tales” wouldn’t exist without this one.) This being 1983, he’s already a massive star after hitting the scene a couple of years previous, and it shows: his tales of itinerant lotharioship are somehow even more sly and confident than they were are on earlier songs like “Morning Ride” and “Cocky Did A Hurt Me.” He’d release it on an album the next year under the arguably more direct “Wreck a Pum Pum”—gotta respect it!—but that’ll never be its name to me.

Additional Listening:

• Baba Brooks, “Shank I Sheck” (1964): From ska sprang one of the rub-a-dub era’s most iconic riddims.

• Yellowman, “Cocky Did A Hurt Me” (1982): With an opening line like “dem gwaan. like dem slack but mi slacka than dem,” you know exactly what you’re getting into.