anc282 said:

Ohhhh...
Well I didn't know there was a stereotype to reggae.
But just to let u know, reggae is a part ah we culture (West Indian ie. Caribbean) and is not only linked to dreadlocks, burnin spliff and Haile Selassie or Ras Tafari.
Seen?

comegetwild said:

I think the answer to this Q would be Fishbone, they can and have done all of these.

JayJai said:

The point that I was trying to make was that in my opinion, reggae sounds more natural coming from a Jamaican, or an African. Go listen to the song "The Sun, Moon & Stars" and listen to Prince going, "Do ya like I do...buck, buck, buck" and then breaking out into that rap verse. It just sounds fake as hell to me. He's not Shabba Ranks is he?

But anyway, for a while there, I was being perhaps a little ignorant, cause I was gonna say, you can't really pull off reggae unless you're Jamaican/Carribbean/African, but then I realized that there are indeed some bands that do it well.

UB40 for instance is a multi-racial group, the band that I just saw in concert Easy Star All Stars have two Rastas in their line-up, but they're based in New York and also have a multi-racial line up.

Last year I saw Luciano & Horace Andy in concert. They were backed up by a full on Aussie band who were playing reggae all night. Even Horace was impressed. At one point he said, "Where does this band come from?" The audience yelled back "AUSTRALIA!" He responded with, "Who said Australians can't play reggae music?"

Well, There ya go!

anc282 said:

When I first heard the beat for "Ripopgodazippa", I almost went friggin crazy!
Reggae has more to do with the music than the accent,
but I ovastand wat u mean by it sounds more natural comin from a West Indian/African.
Lots of West Indians are doing reggae and mixin it up wit rappin these days,
so Ripopgodazippa and a couple others from Prince may be easily accepted as reggae...all because he had the beat just right...
that's how he caught me in the first place!

anc282 said:

It's not just you. Then again, I think Prince does reggae as well as he does rap...

Oh wait...

"Ripopgodazippa" is a cool track.

But truthfully, I think that if he REALLY wanted to make Jamaican folks' lose their minds....he'd cast aside his massive ego, fly down to Jamaica & hook up with Sly & Robbie like Amp Fiddler and Michael Franti of Spearhead just did.

Trust me, there are some BLAZIN' reggae jams on both of those albums. They sorta balanced it out a bit with the Amp Fiddler album. It was still funky & soulful, but they threw in afew riddims as well.

Spearhead's album on the other hand is overall much more reggae sounding.

The other thing too is that reggae music is mostly about peace, love, unity, positivity. When they don't talk about that, they get CONSCIOUS....

Prince's music isn't really about that if you ask me. I mean yeah he talked about "white, black Puerto Rican," but he followed that up with "Everybody just a freakin." So, therefore it's mostly about sex....you know, and he always tries to sex it up in his music which is his trademark of course.

That said, some reggae tunes are about sex too... maybe not to that extent, though.

He never talked about "Chant down Babylon" or "Back down back biters!!!" I mean really, can you imagine him doing that?
[Edited 4/26/09 21:06pm]