Various Artists – Now Thing: 15 Dancehall Instrumentals

Issued by the trip hop and breakbeat label Mo Wax in 2001, Now Thing is a revelatory look at the wildly inventive tracks coming out of Kingston in the 1990s. By then, dancehall had ruled the reggae charts for more than a decade, but much of that music drifted by the so-called Headz who were then into hip hop instrumentals – Miami bass, New York boom-bap, and West Coast G-funk included. Compiled by Maximum Sound label-head Fabrice “Frenchy” Allègre, Now Thing wiggles and jerks through tracks by Steven “Lenky” Marsden, brilliant songwriting-production team Steely & Clevie, famed percussionist Sly Dunbar, and others. A truly buoyant journey, the collection is unavailable on streaming services (though some tracks can be sourced through song searches) and tough, though not impossible, to track on YouTube. The double vinyl is also pretty rare. In this instance, the best move is to secure a used CD, which can currently be found for less than $20.