ENTITY · RECORDING / SONG

"Dem Bow" — Shabba Ranks

Well supported

Shabba Ranks's 1990 record for Bobby "Digital" Dixon's Digital B, from the album Just Reality, voiced over the Steely & Clevie rhythm known as Fish Market or Poco Man Jam. Within Jamaica it was one hard dancehall single among many; outside it, it turned out to be the most widely copied piece of rhythm programming the island ever exported.

Its lyric turns on "bow" in its Jamaican slang sense -- performing oral sex -- and the record is a scornful attack on the practice and on those who endorse it, set inside the wider refusal-to-bow boast the phrase also carries. That is the record, stated plainly; what travelled was the rhythm.

No photograph yet — add one you hold the rights toOpenly licensed or your own work. We publish the credit and the licence beside it.

At a glance

Type: Recording / song →
Era: Dancehall and the digital turn →
Confidence: Well supported
Sources: Discogs (Digital B, 1990); Wikipedia, "Dem Bow" and "Just Reality"; Wayne Marshall, "Dem Bow, Dembow, Dembo."

Share a memoryWrite it, say it, or send a photo.Correct this recordA date, a name, a spelling we got wrong.Add a source leadA flyer, tape, article or photograph.

Connections

Media & sources

Footage

Shabba Ranks — "Dem Bow" (Digital B, 1990)

YOUTUBE · rights discovery only · recording

The voicing that carried the rhythm out of Jamaica. Community upload (channel: OldSkoolMusic100); no rights-holder upload of this record was located, and ShabbaRanksVEVO does not carry it. Discovery-only.

Source link ↗

In stories

Story · Well supportedWho owns the riddim?

A rhythm built in a Kingston studio in 1989 travelled to Panama, through New York, into San Juan, and became the pulse of the biggest Spanish-language pop music on earth. A Los Angeles court is now preparing to put the question of who owns it to a jury.