ENTITY · PERSON (ARTIST, SELECTOR, PRODUCER…)
Super Cat
Well supported
William Maragh, billed the Wild Apache, born in the Cockburn Pen area of Kingston also known as Seivright Gardens, of Jamaican and Indian descent. His debut album Si Boops Deh! in 1985 carried "Boops" — the word entering Jamaican speech for a man who keeps a younger woman — and established a delivery that was faster, more rhythmically intricate and more melodically inventive than most of what surrounded it.
Don Dada in 1992 took him to a US major and into the New York hip-hop orbit, where he worked with the Notorious B.I.G., Heavy D and Puff Daddy, and made him one of the handful of Jamaican deejays American rap treated as a peer rather than a novelty. He has recorded sparingly since.
At a glance
- Confidence
- Well supported
- Sources
- AllMusic; Wax Poetics; Wikipedia; standard dancehall histories.
Coverage areas
Tap a tag to explore related records across the atlas.
Connections
Media & sources
Footage
Recordings
Debate & reception
What people argued about this record — two documented positions each time, kept apart from verified fact. Browse every argument in the archive →
Sting 1990: Ninjaman vs Super Cat — lyrical sport or the night 'war' turned real
One side
Clash as celebrated lyrical sport
The other
Clash as a format that invites real violence
The Ninjaman–Super Cat face-off at Sting (dated by most sources to 1990, by some to 1991) became the reference point for arguing what a dancehall clash actually is. One camp holds it up as elite competitive theatre — a no-holds-barred lyrical showdown at the height of both men's careers, remembered as one of the greatest clashes ever staged. The other camp points to the same night as proof the sport can tip into genuine danger: bottles rained toward the stage and Super Cat famously flung one back into the crowd, sparking pandemonium. The dispute is whether the violence was intrinsic to gun-tinged clash culture or an audience-side eruption incidental to a battle that stayed verbal between the two performers. Sourced to the Jamaica Gleaner's 'three greatest clashes of all time' retrospective and Billboard's Sting anniversary coverage.
Read the argument →Share this record
Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.
Share it freely. Quote it, teach from it, print it, put it on your own site — all we ask is that you credit The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk and link back where a link is possible, so the next reader can follow the trail to the sources. If you publish something built on this, tell us and we will link to you in return.