Dancehall News

2005 was the year dancehall seemed to be everywhere at once. Sean Paul was cooking up the biggest single of his career, a Marley son was carrying Kingston’s harsh truths to the Grammys, and a teenager from Barbados was riding a riddim-style clap onto American radio.

Some years in dancehall drift by. 2006 did not. A Jamaican deejay sat at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, a dance with whirling hair took over every street session from Kingston to Brooklyn, and a teenage producer named Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor started building the riddims that would soundtrack a generation.

Few years in dancehall burned as hot as 2007. Mavado was turning gully pain into hymns, Vybz Kartel had broken from the Alliance and was firing back at his former bredren over every big riddim, and a Bermudian newcomer was crossing over to radio stations far beyond Kingston.

Rygin King’s long wait behind detention walls is over. The dancehall star just landed in Jamaica on the afternoonn of Thursday, October 22, choosing home over continued US immigration detention amid concerns about his health, according to sources close to the entertainer.

If you were anywhere near a sound system in 2002, you heard the same tinny, galloping handclap pattern over and over, and you never got tired of it.

Some years in dancehall feel like a slow build. 2003 felt like a door getting kicked off its hinges.

Twenty-two years on, 2004 still sounds like a bongo loop. No single deejay owned the year the way Sean Paul owned 2003, yet Jamaican rhythms never left American radio.

After a stretch in solitary and a week of dueling stories about a jailhouse fight, Sean “Diddy” Combs is reportedly back among other inmates.

“There she is, my favorite.” That was how Donald Trump greeted Nicki Minaj as she walked into the Oval Office, and the rapper has now made it clear she has no plans to leave his corner.

“I don’t care who your daddy is, I’ll kill you right here.” According to Daytona Beach police, those were the words a 20-year-old man yelled at Rick Ross’ son before allegedly pistol-whipping him outside Bethune-Cookman University.