Lieutenant Stitchie Shares Teachable Moment For Upcoming Dancehall Artists: “Homework…Go Practice”
Dancehall legend Lieutenant Stitchie went back into schoolteacher mode on Tuesday, as he reeled out open instructions on the fundamentals of Dancehall deejaying to his fans, even using formal terminologies embedded in the glossary of singing.
His “Dancehall 101” tutorial came after he viewed a TikTok video of two youngsters doing a skit based on his Almighty God track, in which he both speed-deejayed and slowed down his delivery, something the Masterclass artist thought, through his trained eye as a schoolteacher, was a teachable moment for upcoming Dancehall artists, which was not to be missed.
“Dancehall Lessons: When you’re a master of your craft these are very few and some of the skills that are on display; breath control, vocal delivery (intonation, pronunciation & enunciation), lyrical potency (content & originality), super flow on any riddim no matter the BPM (Beats per minute)- Artiste and riddim must fused together as one, and so on…HOME WORK…Go practice!” Stitchie, who in 2020, declared himself Dancehall’s G.O.A.T (Greatest of All Time) quipped.
Stitchie’s open instructions also come five years after he, in a Penthouse Records interview, lamented several issues plaguing Dancehall, among them the fact that there were many artists who are unable to “deliver to their audience professionally”, a circumstance he described as “sickening and absurd”.
The GC Foster College graduate has played an indelible role in the development of Dancehall music, by pioneering some of the most acclaimed deejaying styles that now form the foundation of the genre.
Among the landmark deejay styles he pioneered were the storytelling, fast-deejaying, and the spelling patterns, which over the decades have been adapted by many of his contemporaries, as well as younger deejays and even American rappers.
His speed-deejaying style which was emulated by Busta Rhymes, was also another proud part of Stitchie’s Dancehall legacy, as it was even used by veteran deejay Daddy Freddie to cement himself in the Guinness Book of Records, as the fastest rapper in the world.
Freddie’s use of Stitchie’s style had gained him global acclaim after he broke the World Record for World’s fastest rapper in 1989, as part of the Capital Radio Music Festival, and went on to smash the record four times taking it from 346 syllables to 598 syllables per minute, twice in the UK – in Covent Garden and at BBC’s Record Breakers show – and two times in the US at the New York Empire State Building and in Washington.
In the Penthouse Records article, which was published on the label’s website in 2017, Stitchie had also rued the use of Auto tune in Dancehall, which, he said “has its place, but it has help to weaken our music and art form” .
He had also commented on the mislabelling of some foprms of music as Dancehall, noting that “the fusing of different genres of music with the original dancehall music and having the audacity to label it dancehall is preposterous”.
In chronicling the history of his deejaying career, Stitchie, whose given name is Cleve Laing, said he “changed the face of dancehall music from being just about rhyming to writing stories using colorful adjectives, figures of speech; like similes, metaphor, personification and so on”.
He had also spoken glowingly of how he added depth to Dancehall, using even his training as a Physical Education and Biology teacher to bring academic classes to Dancehall in song, something never before seen in Dancehall at the time, introducing lessons like biology, English language, West Indian history from high school curriculum to dancehall fans globally.
“I introduced new words and meanings from the Oxford dictionary which took the dancehall vocabulary to a new level, which is patterned by so many of the new dancehall artists today,” he had noted.
In explaining how he developed his fast deejaying style, Stitchie had said he emulated artists before him namely Brigadier Jerry and Ranking Joe.
“Being revered as the king of the fast style in dancehall… What gave birth two the idea was my first exposure two of Jamaica’s most prominent dancehall icons, namely Brigadier Jerry and Ranking Joe, adding that while he was aware that a lot of other artistes had emulated his style of fast talking, his specific style of delivery is still exclusive to him.