52. Blu Cantrell feat. Sean Paul – Breathe (2003)

The relationship between African-American and African-Jamaican music was always problematic. Black Jamaican pop was born in the end of the fifties, when local musicians took American rhythm 'n blues and started to play it with a different beat, creating a new style called ska. In the following two decades, the music evolved and begat rock steady, reggae and dub, but maintained almost no dialogue with the soul and funk that dominated black American pop, and it needed the love and support of white Brits to reach a wider audience. In the early seventies, however, something new happened, the reversal of what happened with ska: a style imported from Jamaica to the US bred a new American style. The custom of going out on the street with a sound system, manipulating the sound of the records while they were playing, and adding a rapper (or actually someone singing in a style similar to rap, called toasting) was born in Jamaica, brought to the Bronx by several DJs, saddled on funk, and manufactured hip-hop. Meanwhile, Jamaica gave birth to yet another style, which combined toasting with electronic sounds and faster reggae beats, and was named dancehall. There was now a common ground for dialogue, but still, it took a long time for the two cultures to connect.

By the beginning of the naughties, the connection was pretty well established. Hip-hop DJs acknowledge their debt to reggae and dub, neo-soul singers regard Bob Marley as their spiritual guide, and dancehall singers are known in the hip-hop community. In the course of the decade, the two styles became intertwined, and many of the global offshoots of hip-hop are actually closer to dancehall in style. But that, it seems, didn't do much good for Jamaican pop, which lost its distinctiveness. Sean Paul was the only Jamaican who became a big star, the biggest since Marley, but he did so by watering dancehall down, and taking it very close to hip-hop. I enjoyed some of the records he released during the decade, but none of them swayed me like dancehall in its heyday.

This is a record that I do like a lot, and it is also the most commercially successful dancehall-r'n'b collaboration of the decade. Another winning production by Dr. Dre, Blu Cantrell provides her strong and unique vocal, and Sean Paul adds color. The duet, appropriately, is about a troubled relationship.