(...Story Continued from Previous Page) And
hip-hop owes a great deal to Jamaica, not only because of the country's vibrant
sound-system culture, but also because of pioneer DJ and Kingston native Kool Herc, who brought turntables to parties in the Bronx
and paved the way for the new style.
"I just remember being -- I would even say infected. It was like a disease, a
great disease that never went away from me," recalls Heavy D.
Even before that, though, the former Dwight Myers was exposed to reggae and
even country music at home. ("Charley Pride, you name it -- Johnny Cash," he recalls of his father's Nashville
favorites.) Today, he's paying tribute to something he never really abandoned.
"When I went into this project, it was the byproduct of me working on a Heavy
D traditional hip-hop album," he says. "Normally I would always try to put a
reggae record on there. Out of my six or seven albums -- whatever -- at least
five of them had a reggae record, just paying homage to my roots. The record
company would never really let me do an entire reggae album, because it didn't
make sense for them monetarily: 'You're not gonna make money doing that.'"
Heavy D says that another hip-hop album today "would be disrespectful to the
culture, first and foremost -- to just come out and make an album where, 'OK,
this is what people expect.' The fans, I tell 'em when they ask me, 'Trust me.
You're romanticizing. If I came out with a record that you thought you wanted me
to come out with, you'd be like, "Eh, he could've just not done that."' I'm
never gonna live up to what I've done; I've been out of the game 10 years
because I could not find my place. And it was because I kept looking in the same
place."
He figures that "even in the beginning, [Heavy D and the Boyz] used to get
chastised because we were so melody-driven. We had bridges in our records,
full-on chord structures. People used to say, 'Aw, they sellin' out.' I remember
when I made 'Now That We Found Love.' I made 'Now That We Found Love' because
Third World made it."
"Go back and listen to some of the voices," Heavy D counsels, "like Alton Ellis. Dennis Brown. There's a guy named Frankie Paul. Beres Hammond -- Jesus. Barrington Levy's voice. Remember, Jamaica back then was far
from modern ... I love the fact that they made it work with whatever they had.
That is what it should be. That is really what art is."
Today, he says, "I wanna make something that people can have fun with, and
that I can have fun again. I really feel like I'm at the starting gate. And
that's probably, for me, the best feeling. I'm doin' shows -- where I used to be
in front of 20, 30 thousand people -- I'm doin' shows in front of 150 [or] 200
people."
Reggae abides, finding new audiences as the years pass. Heavy D says some of
the greatest interest in his new work at magazines such as Essence has been
among the intern staffs. "I just went to see Barrington Levy at the Key Club,
and I'm looking in the audience, and they're all, like, 22-year-olds," he says.
"And they're singing all his songs, lyric for lyric. And all white! And
Barrington Levy's been around -- I looked up to him."
It's worth mentioning where Heavy D has been while off music's radar: acting,
with a long list of credits on the Internet Movie Database. Encouraged by his
friend Laurence Fishburne, he has been a regular on screen and
stage. He's planning a new production of Sam Shepard's "True West," and expects
another collaboration with Fishburne. He'll fit the work in around his new
music. Reggae.
Related: Read will.i.am interview | Read Adele interview
More: See photos of 2009 Nominees | Read about snubs and
surprises |
Hotmail
