“If you love Jamaica, make some noise!” demands Sean Paul. “I come from the islands,” he adds, perhaps unnecessarily. There’s a Jamaican flag on his DJ’s set-up, two dancers twerking authentically either side of him, and the palpable sense that Jamaican dancehall – the party variant of reggae at which Sean Paul excels – is, once again, having one of its many recurrent spells in the sun. Though this mixed London crowd may roll its eyes at such a claim, the city being one of the biggest Jamaican enclaves outside Jamaica; dancehall never really goes away when you host Carnival.
Even the heatwave has got the memo: the Electric Ballroom’s ventilation makes little headway on the tropical humidity. The next big tune Paul does is Like Glue, a nagging hit from Dutty Rock, the 2002 album that established him as a global star the last time dancehall went international. Actual dancing detonates all over the hall.
A little later, Crick Neck, a Paul track from five minutes ago, doesn’t get quite the same physical recognition. But it can’t be long now. Paul’s latest single combines a new dance move (cricking one’s neck to ogle a pretty girl), killer electronic stabs, and a request to “call the chiropractor”; it bodes well for the forthcoming album, even though Shakira and David Guetta are said to be on it.
Paul, who last graced the A-list a decade ago, is hot, then: the kind of hot that needs three changes of towel, and the other kind. Tonight’s gig – sold out in half an hour, says the evening’s MC, Ras Kwame – celebrates Paul’s recent signing to Island Records after a spell working independently. (Island, of course, popularised reggae outside Jamaica in the 70s.) Paul just headlined a night at Bestival. He went to No 1 in the US Billboard charts last summer on Sia’s Cheap Thrills – a party tune that, reprised tonight, remains hard to fault.
Throughout this slick set, Paul scatters little references to Island, how he did some “thinking” about “inking” with them after taking his “medication” (that’ll be weed). He even sings a little Bob Marley off the cuff. His long-time choreographer Tanisha Scott, widely credited for spreading dancehall moves into mainstream pop videos, prances around in an Island Records T-shirt on I’m Still in Love. The slackness of her moves is undercut by the furry key-ring poking out of the pocket of her torn shorts. The atmosphere is unreconstructed but good-natured.
Reunions are rife, but pop comebacks of Paul’s magnitude are actually quite a rare thing. Paul’s most recent album, 2014’s Full Frequency, did not sell well. But thanks to a path out of the wilderness provided by numerous collaborations – Major Lazer’s 2014 hit, Come on to Me, for one; it’s up first tonight – and the alignment of fellow stars, the 43-year-old soon-to-be father has a handle on the zeitgeist once again.
A diagram of the Caribbean’s ebb and flow throughout the last decade of US pop music would be vast, but a partial precis might link the progress of world beats DJ/producer Diplo (also in Major Lazer), of megastar Drake, his home town Toronto (another of the largest Jamaican cities outside Jamaica), and specifically his producer Boi-1da (a Jamaican-Canadian); of Rihanna and her Barbadian lilt, and Trinidadian-American Nicki Minaj toasting as well as rapping.
Non-Caribbean artists have taken note with great enthusiasm, and notable bandwagon-jumpers have included Miley Cyrus (twerking) and Justin Bieber (the “tropical pop” of Sorry, and its nearly 2bn YouTube views). Both have been called out for cultural appropriation, not least by Paul himself, who is fed up with dues not being paid to Jamaican artists.
Paul’s ire is backed up by his own cross-pollination with other reggae acts, (although the less said of Paul’s Little Mix collaboration, the better). Crick Neck features young MC Chi-Ching-Ching. If Paul instinctively inhabits the flirtatious, pop end of dancehall, tonight’s guests add scope: Ghanaian-British rapper Fuse ODG on Dangerous Love, while MC Stylo G comes on for his more hard-hitting Call Mi a Yardie.
It all ends, quite suitably, on Temperature, a Sean Paul mid-00s tune that argues hardest for dancehall – and Sean Paul – never having gone away. There’s no encore: someone decisively rips the Jamaican flag off the decks.
