Stephen McGregor is battling the sniffles. Between the smoke and the air-conditioning, the soft-spoken 19-year-old producer known as “Di Genius” needs a break and a cup of tea. But judging by the number of cars parked out front of Big Ship Studio—the Kingston sound lab built by his father, the esteemed roots-reggae singer Freddie McGregor—it looks like Stephen’s in for another marathon session.
Tonight he’s finishing the final mix on a Mavado song called “Walk Wid Dem Casket,” a dense, brooding track featuring a blistering DJ verse from the singer’s longtime sparring partner Flex. “Fuck the music,” Mavado sings. “Kill them with bloodclaat stab.” Kartel’s name is not mentioned, but the image of the casket is familiar. “Nobody’s gonna believe it, but he did this song two weeks before Sting,” says McGregor. Mavado confirms this, adding that he laughed when he saw Kartel lift the coffin onto the stage. “When I see that I just know that somebody gonna die—and it’s not me.”
Starting with “Weh Dem a Do,” which hit the Billboard charts in 2006, McGregor and Mavado—along with the production team Daseca—have brought uncut Jamaican music to the world, even as they ushered in a dark new style of dancehall. “I was trying to break that sound for my riddims,” McGregor recalls, “and he was coming up with those hardcore melodies. Before that time it was a lot of dancing tunes. Then the whole thing just changed. We got a lot of critiques for it. But the streets was loving that sound.”
Not everybody is, though. “The music is so dark with all the funeral bells—you can only take so much of it,” says a prominent reggae producer who requested anonymity. “And there’s a big difference between telling the stories of the ghetto and using the music to be a bigger gangster.”
Mavado stands in a gloomy studio hallway, carefully building a spliff and feeling his latest recording throb through the walls. He’s made some thoughtful, introspective songs for his new album like “Money” and “Jailhouse,” but “Casket” is a straight battlefield tune. “Ah just the meditation,” he explains. “Sometime you under a spiritual meds, and a next time people get to you and it kinda throw you off,” he says. “Me like take out them things in the studio, instead of go do people something.”
Mavado says he doesn’t want to see the fans hurting one another: “That’s not music. Me nah really support no gang violence.” And he insists that all is not fair in lyrical war. “In everything, you got borders you not supposed to cross,” he says, hangers-on glued to every word. “Even in music. Because remember, you don’t make music just for yourself—you make it for the world. I might do some song and sometime people say, ‘Yo, how him so evil?’” He pauses, laughing. “But at the end of the day, certain things we’re not putting inside of the music. Like saying ‘mother’ and things like that. You have to always remember mama, and if you dis Mama Earth you ah go pay for it—someway, somehow.”
As soon as he had earned enough money, Mavado began building a mansion right next to Bounty Killer’s—and plans to move his mother, children, and family members in with him. But he keeps himself close to his roots in Cassava Piece—right there on the gully side.
home
