![]() Before long, he was scouting talent, arranging, producing, writing and even singing. ![]() Perry’s career began inauspiciously as a handy man/janitor working for three top Kingston producers, Prince Buster, Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid, in Jamaica’s 1960s ska era. He is supposedly the first person to have recorded a Jamaican emcee, U-Roy, talking over a record, which planted the seed of hip-hop culture right there.” “It’s interesting that Kanye sampled ‘Chase the Devil’ because, in many ways, he’s the realization of a blueprint that existed in Scratch’s work back then,” Emch told Billboard in 2017. Subatomic, a collective of musicians combining roots and dub reggae with electronic music and hip-hop, began touring with Scratch in 2010 in 2017 they reimagined Scratch’s 1976 classic dub album Super Ape as Super Ape Returns to Conquer, adding in a rendition of Max Romeo’s “Chase The Devil,” which Scratch produced and co-wrote with Romeo as an imaginative take on good triumphing over evil. “Scratch did his own writing, producing, ran his own label and studio, was involved in every aspect of his music and in many ways, he shaped the role of a producer that we see today with guys like Kanye West and Timbaland,” observed Emch, co-founder of Subatomic Sound System, in a 2017 interview with Billboard. ![]() That said, King Scratch's format, focusing mostly on singles while including numerous rare and alternate versions, makes it both an ideal starting point for novices as well as a must for longtime fans, not unlike 1997's vital Arkology.Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Legendary Jamaican Producer & Dub Pioneer, Dies at 85 It would be nearly impossible to compile a truly definitive anthology of Perry's daunting body of work - even an exhaustive dozen-disc box would likely miss some essentials and leave several corners of his discography untouched. demonstrate the hallmarks of Scratch's later work, from his inimitable creaky vocals and free-associative wordplay to his still-unconventional approach to production, with multiple voices and strange, ear-catching noises layered in the mix. A warped take on Bob Marley's "Exodus," here included in a rare 7" mix, and the title track to the Grammy-winning Jamaican E.T. The final stretch of the compilation concentrates on solo Scratch, including late-era Black Ark recordings like "Bafflin' Smoke Signal," then ending with two cuts that appeared on Trojan-issued albums from the early 2000s. The two songs included by the Congos originate from the same time period as the 1977 opus Heart of the Congos, a truly visionary fusion of Rastafarian roots lyrics and Perry's otherworldly sonics, though neither track appeared on the original album. Similarly, Max Romeo's "Chase the Devil" (known to ravers for being sampled by the Prodigy on the 1992 single "Out of Space") leads into Perry's truly wild "Disco Devil," which dunks the same rhythm in a vat of acidic distortion and echo. These include undisputed timeless classics like Susan Cadogan's "Hurt So Good" (a Top Five hit in the U.K.) and Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" appearing in a 12" mix accompanied by DJ Jah Lion. A considerable amount of Perry's best-known productions is on here, with many of them included in rare or previously unreleased mixes largely unheard outside of Jamaica. For the most part, the compilation concentrates on songs Perry produced for other artists rather than dub versions and experiments, with a large percentage being concise 7" single mixes, and only a handful constituting extended 12" versions or album cuts. The collection mainly focuses on Perry's work from the '60s and '70s, from early rocksteady singles (like his own "People Funny Boy," a vicious putdown of former employer Joe Gibbs, and Upsetters tracks like "Return of Django") to productions from his legendary Black Ark studio, with only a taste of his later output at the end of the set. Appearing a year after Lee "Scratch" Perry's death at the age of 85, King Scratch is the late musician's first posthumous anthology, though far from his first compilation issued by Trojan Records.
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