Ode to the Ragga Twins
Plus Shut Up And Dance, Rhyw, Okihide, Delasi and more
Ode to the Ragga Twins
The early rave scene is often portrayed as something close to paradise: youngsters getting together to dance and hug in the fields of Merry England, as football hooliganism melts away and the Cold War comes to an end.
But what about the nasty bits? What about the drug dealers, police busts and rabid capitalism that accompanied the new rave dream? For that, we need to turn to Hackney duo Shut Up And Dance and their associates the Ragga Twins, who recorded a remarkable series of 12 inches and one devastating album for the Shut Up And Dance label in the early 1990s, all of which should be compulsory listening for anyone with even the slightest interest in dance music.
Shut Up And Dance occupy the perversely masterful position of being one of the key acts in rave music, while never really fitting into the scene. SUAD, aka PJ and Smiley, grew up in London’s soundsystem culture, to which they added their love of hip hop and making people dance. The result was a unique mixture of galloping breakbeats and rap chat that they saw as fast hip hop and the rave world embraced as its own, sowing the seeds for hardcore and jungle.
The result of this marriage of convenience was rave music that took a sly, sideways glance at the brave new world of Acid House. The duo’s early single £10 To Get In was remixed and reissued as £20 To Get In a few months after its initial release, as a commentary on rising prices and rave capitalism, while White White World, from the duo’s debut album Dance Before The Police Come, talks about racism in London clubs, police and beyond. Even SUAD’s big chart hit, Raving I’m Raving, is detached from rave euphoria, its lyrics offering the important kicker: “But do I really feel the way I feel?” as a bittersweet kiss off to the song.
That album is fantastic, as is Nicolette’s disquieting and sensual Now Is Early LP, which SUAD produced and released on their Shut Up And Dance label in 1992. But the label’s gem - at least as far as I am feeling this week - is Reggae Owes Me Money, the 1991 debut album from the Ragga Twins (aka Deman Rocker and Flinty Badman), who SUAD had brought on board in 1990.
“We’d put out three or four singles of our own: 5,6,7,8, £10 To Get In, £20 To Get In,” PJ told Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton in 2005. “We thought, ‘We can’t just carry on releasing our own stuff, we have to sign people up and expand. Try something different.’ And the Ragga Twins, we knew them from a soundsystem called Unity. Funnily enough I used to go to school with them as well. We had an idea: ‘Let’s try this reggae thing.’ We had done our hip-hop thing, we had done our uptempo thing and we wanted to try the reggae side of it. So we just approached them, had a chat. And they were like, ‘Fuck it, let’s give it a go.’”
The result was an astonishing run of Ragga Twins singles released in 1990 and 1991, which were then compiled on Reggae Owes Me Money in June 1991. The 10 tracks on the album combines the sharpest of Shut Up And Dance’s productions - whirlwind breaks, cavernous bass lines, perfectly judged samples, acidic bleeps and synths - with Ragga Twins’ biting lyrical insight and razor-edged hooks, to create a ragga-rave hybrid that would prove hugely influential.
SUAD, whose own music borrowed more from hip hop than reggae, adjusted their production sound to the Ragga Twins’ demands, throwing dancehall rhythms and reggae samples into the mix, with Love Talk, for example, running a funk break over a dembow beat. A look at some of the samples the album employs shows the tightrope that the SUAD duo were walking. Wipe The Needle borrows the trance riff from The KLF’s What Time Is Love, Spliffhead Remix samples Carl Craig (as BFC)’s ambient techno classic Galaxy, while 18-inch Speaker samples Jah Shaka’s reggae classic Verse 5. Juggling, which closes the album in style, employs what sounds to me like the squeal of a car braking, to devastating effect.
At times the sonic mixtures are riotous: Hooligan 69 mixes the devotional intro from Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy with finger-pricking sharp bleeps taken from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s proto-electronica classic Computer Game and a charging breakbeat from Rufus Thomas’ Do the Funk Penguin Part 2. “I remember when they played their first tune, Hooligan 69, at [London rave club] Dungeons,” Smiley told Brewster and Broughton. “Everyone’s looking at each other: ‘What the f*ck is this?’ With the Prince intro, ‘Dearly beloved…’ And then the reggae guy jumps in on it and sings. They loved it. Loved it! It just blew up.”
“They knew exactly what they wanted from us,” Flinty told Data Transmission in 2019. “They said ‘No-one is doin’ this Ragga ting in this ting so what you need to do is chat like you chat on the soundsystem, don’t go in the studio and water it down like a nice record, we want it ruff like soundsystem.’ And that’s exactly what we done.”
SUAD are brilliant producers. But there’s something charmingly un-slick about their work with the Ragga Twins, with feeling prioritised over perfection. The drum machine hi-hats on on Spliffhead Remix, for example, sounds perilously close to slipping out of sync with the sample, creating a pocket of a judiciously funky peril that I could listen to for hours.
The dancehall touches on Reggae Owes Me Money help to explain why the record was so extremely influential on British post-rave music. Shut Up And Dance’s records under their own name were clearly an influence on hardcore, jungle and drum & bass, with their accelerated breakbeats and rave sounds. But their productions for the Ragga Twins add the vital touch of reggae that jungle would later adopt as its own. Jungle has more than one father; but ragga jungle pretty much starts with the Ragga Twins’ first records.
For all the excellence of SUAD’s production, Ragga Twins were far from featured guests on their own records. Where SUAD turned a critical eye on rave and drug culture in their music, Deman Rocker and Flinty Badman went in HARD, their lyrics taking in everything from homelessness to politics, heroin to hooliganism, on records that take no prisoners.
Perhaps the best examples of this is the astounding The Killing, in which the Ragga Twins address heroin addiction in the strongest, grimmest terms - “all the drug pushers… f*ck off” / “heroin is killing” / “you don’t have the money you have to murder” being some of the choicest examples - over an incredible jaunty sample from the SOS Band, to create the most bouncy anti-heroin song you can imagine.
The Ragga Twins’ music clearly touched a nerve in the UK, where rave music was starting to fracture, as hard drugs, ultra capitalism and heavy policing reared their ugly heads. The group’s first four 12 inches for SUAD all hit the lower reaches of the UK’s chart, with the album peaking at an impressive number 26.
That was the commercial peak for the Ragga Twins, who departed Shut Up And Dance soon after. The duo have continued to work, providing vocals for the likes of Aquasky, Skrillex and Metrik, with a new single with Lusinda released in July. But it is Reggae Owes Me Money - the name a joke between Flinty and Deman that SUAD latched into - that remains their masterpiece.
Despite being essentially a collection of singles, the ten tracks hold together brilliantly, a lightning flash of musical inspiration and creative partnership that reflected back the sometimes sordid reality of early 90s Britain. Reggae Owes Me Money was a hugely influential record, providing a spark for ragga jungle and eventually drum & bass. But it also belongs to a longer musical lineage of serious party music that stretches from The Specials to Public Enemy, Marvin Gaye to Edwin Starr. Reggae Owes Me Money is music for dancing and NOT forgetting all your troubles, rave music for bad times and good and a social document that remembers the dark edges around rave’s glittering history.
Some listening
Rhyw’s VAST Honey Badger was released more than a year ago but I still don’t think I’ve quite recovered from its teeth-grindingly intense percussive onslaught. Engine Track, from his new Mister Melt EP, is almost as feverish, riding a one-note synth attack like Energy Flash dancing on its own grave, with a dose of Rhyw’s trademark rhythmical bear traps added in. Extra marks, too, for the engine breakdown that gives the track its name.
Every time I hear Japanese electronic music I think a) how shamefully little I know about Japanese electronic music and b) how much more I would like to know about it. Okihide is one of a new generation of Japanese producers who features on a forthcoming compilation from DJ Alex From Tokyo, Japan Vibrations Vol . 1, alongside CMJK, Mind Design and Hiroshi Watanabe, as well as established names such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Susumu Yokota, Silent Poets, Mondo Grosso and Kyoto Jazz Massive. I haven’t found a great deal of information about Okihide online, beyond the fact that they appear to have 23 monthly listens on Spotify. But Biskatta is a wonderful piece of work, a float-y, breakbeat-y tech ambient number that reminds me of Carl Craig at his 69 best.
Badbadnotgood featuring Charlotte Day Wilson - Sleeper
I don’t know if Sleeper is actually about someone who sleeps a lot but it certainly sounds like it could be, with a gorgeously languid, ever so slightly psychedelic, edge that reminds me of Anyhow, the excellent solo album by BBNG’s Leland Whitty, all fluttering woodwind and cinematic scope. The key change near the end of this song will bring sunshine to your autumn and should be compulsory education in schools.
Delasi - Amplifier featuring Nii Noi Nortey
Delasi, a new signing to Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings, comes from Koforidua, the capital of Eastern Region in southern Ghana. Amplifier, however, uses coastal rhythms that are indigenous to Accram, Ghana’s capital, and features Ghanaian multi-instrumentalist Nii Noi Nortey on saxophone work out. I don’t know anywhere near enough about the music of Ghana but Amplifier makes me want to know more, mixing hypnotic beats with chanted vocals à la Sun Ra. Delasi himself defines Amplifier as both prayer and mantra, which will give you a good idea of the neo-spiritual intensity going on here.
I once decided to make some serious playlisting cash by publishng a Spotify playlist called “lofi house music to study, sleep, relax, chill and work to” and putting a picture of a cute dog on it. It failed. Abjectly. So I am still here. Anyway, my point is, my ACTUAL playlist, the one that I like, the newest and the bestest, now has a gigantic 30 likes, which means the playlisting millions can only be a dog’s breath away. So do, please, help me out with your likes, for 1,616 of the finest songs. Oh and feel free to listen to the lofi playlist too. Despite my nefarious intentions, the music is great.
On the Radio Primavera Sound Twitch this week: the best of Sitges (in Spanish), an interview with Llum (in Catalan) and Francis Mercier (in English). Check it out here: and watch live every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11am to 13h CET.
I liked this post immediately after reading the title “Ode to the Ragga Twins”. Glad to see these legends & SUAD getting some attention.