Big Youth: Screaming Target : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Crucial Seventies reggae riddims in the early 1970s, Big Youth -- the resident DJ for Lord Tipperton's hi-fi sound system -- ruled Kingston, Jamaica. Toasting over bass-driven versions of early reggae hits, he slayed rival DJs with his pointed cultural and religious commentary and his trademark James Brown-ish shrieks and yells. "Screaming Target," the killer title track of his debut album, is the perfect illustration of the complicated genealogy of DJ music: The rhythm, played by Big Youth's Kingston studio band, is a dubbed-out version of the late-Sixties reggae hit "No, No, No," which was itself based on an obscure American R&B song. The fourteen bonus tracks help clarify the relationship between the toaster and the track: Most are alternate versions of the same songs (using the same musicians and producer) by reggae legends such as Augustus Pablo and Gregory Isaacs. Listen for Pablo's "K.G.'s Half Way Tree," an instrumental version of "Screaming Target," on which a demented-sounding gypsy violin rides over metallic echo-chamber drums.