As promised it’s Money Tree (aka New Money riddim) Part Few, the electric boogaloo. I tend to add "electric boogaloo" to pretty much everything that has a part two, but in this case I think it actually fits. Now that it’s had a week to sit in my head, I recognize that the active ingredient of this beat is the anonymous high-end noises that sound like electricity percolating—like suspense music building to a climax or those Morse code themes they play before a newsflash to let you know shit is urgent, a little signal that says, Listen to the message that follows.
I listened, and after absorbing the Vybz tune I can see clearly now why dude is king of Jamaica in 2010 and also why they named this set Money Tree, in spite of the fact that there already was a riddim with that name floating around. These seven tunes definitely comprise the New Money motherlode and show off Livity’s talent for tailoring the beat (bespoke riddim?) to each vocalist with different arrangements. Case in point, “Too Much” is the best I’ve heard a Twin of Twins tune work in a juggling yet, and when Vegas excurses on his trademark gospel excursion, it flows with the riddim much better—for my money—than on “I Am Blessed,” which propelled the Good Life riddim to higher heights.
New Money II Blend
Munga, “Inna 2010”
Pamputae, “Money”
Vybz Kartel, “Money Tree”
Vegas, “Jah Never Fail Me”
Twin of Twins, “Too Much”
Stacious, “Slow It Down”
Serani, “Got to Survive”
Download: Ghetto Palms New Money Blend
For oonu’s information, the whole riddim run drops on iTunes April 27th and there’s still a bunch of tunes—Ele, Konshens, Kibaki and more—that I didn’t even touch yet. The conspicuous absence of course is Mavado, who killed the Good Life dead on “High Under” but I guess he has been busy surviving motorcycle crash-ups—as documented in last week’s debut “Nine Life”—and making cameo appearances in Drake videos.
So now that the bashment newswire signals have got your antennae tuned to this channel for urgent updates I guess I should use the opportunity to hit you with some real information, so check out this trailer for the forthcoming tropixploitation expose Bananas! which I happened upon over at Ghetto Bassquake. It is being distributed in the US by Adam Yauch’s Oscilliscope films and it looks…well, crazy.
