25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007

 

10. 'JC 001' (and ‘Ragga’ Music)

 

“It’s a mix race thing, you’ll never understand but anyone is able if they really give a damn, lets talk true, me and all of you, amounts to much more than any one race crew”

 

“Social Apartheid split it wide and then? No more ‘Nurnbergs’, not now nor never again”

 

“Sick of the moans tell us stick to our own, well I’m already a genetic mixture and tone, a cultural collage, a mixed race in charge against one-colour montage I’m built to barge. Against a protected mentality, protect my family when? Will the fear disappear, never again!”.

 

One time fastest rapper in the world (credited as such by ‘The Guinness Book of Records’ in the early 1990s before the emergence of superstars like ‘Twista’ et al) JC 001 first came to prominence on one of the tracks indie duo ‘Curve’ recorded for an early EP on David A. Stewart’s ‘Anxious Records’ label. After featuring on the song ‘Ten Little Girls’, JC 001 was retained by Stewart’s label for a solo career and joined ‘Londonbeat’, ‘the Starlings’ and the ‘Vegas’ singer Terry Hall on the roster.

 

With the alternative press now focused on his talents, he released the anti-racism smash ‘Never Again’. Based around the brass refrain from The Special’s iconic number one hit called ‘Ghost Town’, JC OO1 rapped at about a million miles an hour on this brilliant record that I think could never be attempted on karaoke. It may have been easy to sing along in time to some of the sentences like ‘Some have stated I’m contaminated. I’m tainted by the tar brush what they must have hated. The way that I assimilated my family done created it’s a fusion picking power thing, they must have fainted’ but after that I guess if you had tried it you would just descend into a style of ‘rapping’ that was not a million miles from John Larkin’s ‘scatting’. After this attack on all of the worlds fascists, JC 001 moved into more romantic territory, well as romantic as you could get in a ragga record, and from using a sample of ‘the Specials’ he moved further back through ska history to base his record on another number one, this time piano melody from ‘Double Barrel’ for his ‘Cupid’ hit record.

 

Did anyone else attempt his raps back in the day, or in fact other artists like ‘Snow’ or ‘Shabba Ranks’?

 

25 YEARS OF RECORD COLLECTING: MUSICAL MEMORIES 1982 - 2007

 

He was a bit c**p really, that 'Cupid' record destroyed Dave & Ansell Collins' memory and the covers with him catching a bullet in his teeth were just laughable :)

is Ragga and dancehall the same thing