If Only Out of Vanity – Staceyann Chin

Molly Angelheart – That psychotic bit…

Again – John Legend

If I Woz A Tap Natch Poet – Linton Kwesi Johnson

‘dub poetry has been described as…” over-compensation for deprivation”‘
Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry

if I woz a tap-natch poet like Chris Okigbo
Derek Walcot
ar T.S.Eliot

ah woodah write a poem
soh dam deep
dat it bittah-sweet
like a precious
memory
whe mek yu weep
whe mek yu feel incomplete

like wen yu lovah leave
an dow defeat yu kanseed
still yu beg an yu plead
till yu win a repreve
an yu ready fi rack steady
but di muzik done aready

still
inna di meantime
wid mi riddim
wid mi rime
wid mi ruff base line
wid mi own sense a time
goon poet haffi step in line
caw Bootahlazy mite a gat couple touzan
but Mandela fi im
touzans a touzans a touzans a touzans

if I woz a tap-natch poet
like Kamau Brathwaite
Martin Carter
Jayne Cortez ar Amiri Baraka

ah woodah write a poem
soh rude
an rootsy
an subversive
dat it mek di goon poet
tun white wid envy

like a candhumble/ voodoo/ kumina chant
an ole time calypso ar a slave song
dat get ban
but fram granny

rite
dung
to
gran
pickney

each an evry wan
can recite dat-dey wan

still
inna di meantime
wid mi riddim
wid mi rime
wid mi ruff base line
wid mi own sense a time

goon poet haffi step in line
caw Bootahlazy mite a gat couple touzan
but Mandela fi im
touzans a touzans a touzans a touzans

if I woz a tap-natch poet
like Tchikaya U’tamsi
Nicholas Guillen
ar Lorna Goodison

ah woodah write a poem
soh beautiful dat it simple
like a plain girl
wid good brains
an nice ways
wid a sexy dispozishan
an plenty compahshan
wid a sweet smile
an a suttle style

still
mi naw goh bow an scrape
an gwan like a ape
peddlin noh puerile parchment af etnicity
wid ongle a vaig fleetin hint af hawtenticity
like a black Lance Percival in reverse
ar even worse
a babblin bafoon whe looze im tongue

no sah
nat atall
mi gat mi riddim
mi gat mi rime
mi gat mi ruff base line
mi gat mi own sense a time

goon poet haf tuh step in line
caw Bootahlazy mite a gat couple touzan
but Mandela fi im
touzans a touzans a touzans a touzans.

Biography

Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in 1952 in Chapelton, Jamaica. He moved to London in 1963 to be with his mother and went on to read Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

He joined the Black Panther movement in 1970, organising a poetry workshop and working with Rasta Love, a group of poets and percussionists. He joined the Brixton-based Race Today Collective in 1974. His first book of poems, Voices of the Living and the Dead, was published by the Race Today imprint in 1974. His second book, Dread, Beat, an’ Blood (1975) includes poems written in Jamaican dialect, and was released as a record in 1978. He is widely regarded as the father of ‘dub poetry’, a term he coined to describe the way a number of reggae DJs blended music and verse. Johnson maintains that his starting point and focus is poetry, composed before the music, and for this reason he considers the term ‘dub poetry’ misleading when applied to his own work. He recorded several albums on the Island label, including Forces of Victory (1979), Bass Culture (1980), LKJ In dub (1980) and Making History (1984) and founded his own record label – LKJ – in the mid-1980s, selling over two million records worldwide.

In 1977 he was awarded a C. Day Lewis Fellowship and became Writer in Residence for the London Borough of Lambeth. Race Today published his third book of poetry, Inglan Is a Bitch, in 1980. He worked primarily as a journalist in the 1980s and was a reporter for Channel 4 television’s The Bandung File. Tidings An’ Times: Selected Poems was published in 1991 as both a book and musical recording.

He was made Associate Fellow at Warwick University in 1985 and Honorary Fellow at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1987. He is a regular broadcaster on radio and hosted an evening of Caribbean music and culture for BBC Radio 2 in October 2001.

Linton Kwesi Johnson lives in Brixton, South London. A selection of his poetry, entitled Mi Revalueshanary Fren, was published in 2002 as a Penguin Classic edition with an introduction by Fred D’Aguiar. In 2005 he was awarded a Musgrave medal by the Insitiute of Jamaica, for eminence in the field of poetry.

Voices of the Living and the Dead Race Today, 1974

Dread, Beat an’ Blood Bogle L’Ouverture, 1975

Inglan is a Bitch Race Today, 1980

Tidings an’ Times: Selected Poems Bloodaxe, 1991

Mi Revalueshanary Fren Penguin, 2002

Buju Banton – How Long

Janice Lynn Mather

Ericka

a brassy mouth.  a laugh spilled out like inverted mango,
slashed purple skin spill orange flesh.  and tart.
and sweet.
cuss and row, trombone inside out,
a scarlet saxophone, cymbals her lungs
a rim of gold about a tooth
a loud woman.

he comes by around nine,
the five-times baby daddy,
pulls Ericka out into the street
his knife making a dozen new vaginas
in her belly.

her slingshot voice spatters the house front walls
then stops.
a black nissan takes him away from her
neck slit

spread wide.
eyes open, bright as rain, she stays.
the street cleared quiet.
houses take two steps back.  the road opens,
waiting,

and Ericka’s throat pours red
fermented, sweet and rotten
and trails, washing the street dust down and
spilling out

rusted scarlet bitter
laughter at a festival,
fête at a funeral.

Ericka featured on tongues of the ocean

In her own words: “Janice Lynn loves being a writer and knowing little bits of other people’s secrets and weaving them semidiscreetly into poems and musings and prose. Never underestimate the introverts amongst you.”

IYEOKA ft. Paula Fuga – Who Would Follow

War Cry

Source

Maximus Panthas f. Tribal Rain – Freestyle

MySpace

Knock Knock – Daniel Beaty