3. Just Touch Down -Stylo G
After his Top 3 nomination for both Top International Artist of 2019 and Top Upcoming Artist of 2019, and after taking the #5 spot on our Top 10 Chart, Stylo G is back. His Just Touch Down mega single earns our ReggaeMania.com Awards song #3 spot on the ‘2019 Tops’ Top 10 Dancehall-Reggae Chart.
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Just Touch Down has provided some of the happiest memories when looking back at good times inside the best dances in 2019. The song is not to be taken seriously, just a bragging-boasting tune, talking about the good life artists can live when they’re rich. What’s exciting about Just Touch Down is the combination and lyrical performance of the three power artists featured, Nicki Minaj, Vybz Kartel, and of course, Stylo G. These supreme dancehall superstars unleash in your face lyrics on an level musical playing field with equal potency and precise execution; the flows, the advance patter, all could not have been delivered better.
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‘Just touch down inna the airport (Mm-hmm), Tracksuit and mi airforce (Mm-hmm)
All of mi gyal them love me (Mm-hmm), All the one weh seh me ugly (Mm-hmm)
She go spot me designer (Mm-hmm), She wan give me the vagina (Mm-hmm)
Everything a from London Bond Street nothing never come from China (Mm-hmm)
The beat or ‘riddim’ for Touch Down is one of the appeals of the song, it’s great to dance to, you want to get on the floor and put down your best moves when you hear a beat or drum pattern sounding similar those created by 1980’s early Hip-hop old school heads Run-DMC. As soon as the vocals come in, everything is proper, the song sounds nice. The music or sample saturated inside the beat, though hard to describe, sounds gypsy like, or East-Indian, maybe Persian, a simple looped one-bar g-note, extremely addictive because it’s repetitive, bold, hypnotic, raw, and unconventional. There was no official video made for Touchdown, but the YouTube (Audio) post has a almost 14 million ‘views’ and over 6,500 comments.
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The more you hear Touch Down, the more you like it, it’s lyrically brilliant, and Nicki Minaj kills it, just like Spice in Dumpling, she makes reference about being rich and living the good life;
‘Just touched down inna da G5 (Mm-hmm)
You know I’m buzzin’ like a beehive (Mm-hmm)
We still bumpin’ to dat C5 (Mm-hmm)
Fendi prints pon mi knee highs (Mm-hmm)’
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Vybz Kartel is so lyrically talented, even from prison, he was able to spit out a lyrical style on Touch Down that left people re-crowning him as the G.O.A.T. Nobody knows how he does it, but if there were any artist who deserved credit for influencing Stylo G’s style, it would be Vybz Kartel.
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‘Just touched down like NASA (Mm-hmm), Nicki pum-pum fatter (Mm-hmm)
While you’re there at your job (Mm-hmm), Your girl givin’ me a blowjob (Mm-hmm)’
Just Touch Down was not only one of last year’s most popular songs, it was also one of the most debated when dancehall critics questioned ‘what’ kind of music they were listening to. The realization was, if you strip or remove the vocal elements from Touchdown, the beat may still sound great, but had nothing to do with reggae. As a matter of fact, if an American rapper like Drake or Jay Z werer to drop lyrics on this same Touchdown instrumental, it’s unlikely that people would hear any reggae influence whatsoever, the song would pass as American-UK Trap/Hip-hop.
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Dancehall diehards are just monitoring, a bit paranoid because their intuition tells them their dancehall, the way they knew it, is eroding, right in front of their eyes, and that the traditional reggae music and riddims on which they grew, was now being pushed back in the back of the DJ Serato crates, making room for a new league of artists who thrive on the Trap-Hip-hop path we are seeing more and more of today.
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There is a good argument on both sides, with old heads criticizing the quality of today’s Trap influenced dancehall-reggae music, how it sounds, the lack of lyrical depth, the negativity, the sexism, the male chauvinism, the arrogance, the ignorance. The elders say, it’s just not ‘good’ music, some of the ‘worst’ produced in years.
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‘A me pop off mi tag dem (Mm-hmm), Mi new Benz it a mad dem (Mm-hmm)
Everyday mi swag dem (Mm-hmm), Louis deh pon mi bag dem (Mm-hmm)’
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On the flip side, the new heads say to the elders; for too long, what you’ve been doing, the way you’ve been doing it, has not worked for an industry that has kept its head buried in the sand while in stagnation, and for years, have not been profiting for the majority of artists out there trying a ting. They say something has to change, and see themselves as players and re-arrangers here to institute those changes, via perhaps, this different, more Americanized and pop-structured Trap-Hip-hop approach.
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Congratulations to Stylo G. ‘Touch Down’ is song #3 on our ReggaeMania.com Awards ‘Top 10 Songs of 2019’ dancehall-reggae chart.
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