Me and my man who play dominos (but haven’t played
in a while) always talk about how it’s shocking ‘90s dancehall never makes more
prominent placement in pata-modern hipster buffet culture. That shit is so
fucking sick – hyper patois lyrics over top Jeep Cherokee rattling beats. But
then again, must always remember to be thankful for the wonderful cultural
things that haven’t been Christopher Columbussed back into mass consciousness,
thus sit around listening to Bounty Killer tracks, wondering whatever happened
to all those Tony Touch reggae mixtapes I used to have, gotten at Willie’s on
Southside at the intersection of Hull and Belt Boulevard, or after they had to
stop selling mixtapes, little bit further south down at Angie’s Records, which
was mostly just selling crack vials and glass pipes – empty of course – for street
marketing purposes. Man, crazy to think back on that shit – a head shop for
crack distribution supplies, but also still carried the banging ass mixtape
selection up front. That’s true street capitalism that I love, like an economic
short and long haircut – you got the wild shit in the back, not necessarily
viewable by normal public unless they know what’s up (like secret menu at a
for-real Asian restaurant), but up front some really useful shit was going on
as well.
I’ve always theorized inside my own cultural anthropological head that the
hidden link between dancehall and reggaeton was not just the simple geography
of “well Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic really right there one checker
jump over Haiti in the Caribbean” but also Tony Toca. You can try to convince
me otherwise, but it’s gonna have to be over dominos, in person. Bring
batteries for the boombox too, plus a big San Pellegrino’s in the bottle if you
stopping at the corner market. Yeah, they got it, in the back cooler, by the
orange juice.
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