The decline of smut

One of the more lamentable aspects of the Bobo dread takeover of Jamaican music - along with bunning fire pon batty bwoy's head, if you please - is the concomitant decline of the smutty reggae tune. There was a slackness arms race in lyrics in the 1990s which crowded out innuendo and insinuation, and not necessarily for the better. For the genre threw up some mighty tunes, in its day, some of which you're about to enjoy.

Max Romeo was the king of this sort of thing. You probably already know his "Wet Dream," banned by the BBC for its lewd content - though Max expressed disbelief, explaining that the lyrics were an innocent reference to a leaky roof.

But even better in my book is "Hole Under Crutches" - a version of "Hole in my Bucket" for a liberated age.

The same tune was reversioned in the dancehall era by Nigger Kojak and Liza, as "Ram It" - a Joe Gibbs/Errol Thompson production, this.

Around the same time, Yellowman was creating the slackness genre. But some of his lyrical wordsmithery was clever and subtle enough to qualify as smut in my book, and this is my post. So here's the wonderful "Breezes."

The spiritual home of innuendo has always been Trinidadian calypso rather than Jamaican reggae, so finally here's a beauty from Lord Creator - a calypsonian who later moved to Jamaica and made his name as a ska vocalist. It's about his Big Bamboo (I've got a much better and less cheesy version of this but only on vinyl, sadly).

Tom