How Lloyd “King Jammy” James changed dancehall and triggered the genre’s ’80s evolution
How Lloyd “King Jammy” James changed dancehall and triggered the genre’s ’80s evolution
The 1980s was a turbulent decade in Jamaica. Government control had shifted from Michael Manley’s socialist-leaning People’s National Party to Edward Seaga’s free market–oriented Jamaican Labour Party. As Prime Minister Seaga tilted the country’s foreign policy to the right, American political and economic meddling in the region, combined with the nascent drug trade from Colombia to Miami via Jamaica, threw the island into flux.