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Super Cat’s Getting Fit For His Great Dancehall Comeback

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Super Cat. Photo – Martei Korley/GQ

Dancehall’s Don Dadda Super Cat says he has been training vigorously, ahead of the Reggae Love Fest in New York, on Friday night and a series of other shows, to mark what many have been describing as his “great comeback” to Dancehall, following years of absence.

In a recent interview with GQ Magazine, the Wild Apache, who is now 57 years old, said he has been in what he describes as serious training mode, ahead of the show which will be staged at the Radio City Music Hall, with his compatriots Shabba Ranks, Cutty Ranks, Chaka Demus and Pliers; Junior Reid, Barrington Levy, and Dawn Penn as co-headliners.

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Among Super Cat’s new fitness regimen is a pre-dawn jogging session for which he rises at 5:00am, as well as abstention from alcohol and “unhealthy food”.

“I have to put in a whole heap of miles and miles, then stretch out the sprain and ache.   Push up again and open up the cardio. Step it up, step it up. I must keep the work, because Bob Marley gone. Peter Tosh gone. Gregory Isaacs, John Holt— whoever great, dem gone. So we have to keep it goin’!” the Ghetto Red Hot artist explained to GQ.

One of Dancehall’s original rude bwoys, Super Cat, whose given name is William Maragh, was a dominant deejay in the 1980s and up to the mid-1990s, hailing from Cockburn Pen in Kingston’s inner-city.

The Under Pressure artist was one of the first Dancehall artistes to go mainstream, forming alliances with Hip Hop superstars including Heavy D, P. Diddy and Biggie Smalls.

In the early 1990s, Super Cat relocated from Jamaica to New York, where he signed with Columbia Records.  In 1992, he released the album Don Dada and followed up with The Struggle Continues in 1995.  He was also featured on the remix of Kriss Kross’s mega-hit, Jump, in 1992.

Super Cat’s first releases included the 1986 hit Boops, which made a mockery of sugar daddies, and, like many other words coined by artistes, became entrenched in the Jamaican vernacular.

The Wild Apache was also one of the first Dancehall deejays to glorify and immortalize the Clarks brand of shoes as a fashion statement and the footwear of choice for Jamaican men, in his 1985 single Trash and Ready.

Super Cat virtually disappeared from the music scene in the late 1990s, only making intermittent appearances over the decades, with his last engagements in Jamaica being Sting 2013 and Reggae Sumfest 2016.

However, he had signalled his full return to the Dancehall stage in September 2020, with the release of the single and music video for Push Time, a collab with artist and producer Salaam Remi, which was met with glee by many longtime Dancehall lovers, particularly in New York.

The song was a joint effort of Wild Apache and Louder Than Life Records and was one of the tracks on Remi’s Black on Purpose album.  Push Time, a social commentary on crime and criminality, was recorded on the riddim on which Super Cat, Nicodemus, and Junior Demus voiced the single Cabin Stabbin, back in 1994 and the accompanying music video was also Super Cat’s first in 20 years.

Super Cat told GQ that Push Time, initially, was to have been a collab with Akon, but that for various reasons the track didn’t work out.

“Some great, great artist in Africa who love reggae—I figure his name is Akon—he went and touched that Cabin Stabbin’ riddim and they said they want Super Cat on the track,” he had explained, noting additionally that he had “felt like his contribution could be turned into something bigger”, and as a consequence, he had Asked Salaam to work with him to “make the song a single”.

In October last year, at the Barclays Center Super Cat had headlined TrillerVerz III, a concert staged by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland’s as part of their famous Verzuz series, his first major live performance in eight years.

Following his Verzuz appearance, Super Cat had starred at a multi-day Beach Retreat Weekend in the Florida Keys during Thanksgiving Weekend and later appeared on DJ Cassidy’s “Pass The Mic’ Reggae Edition 2022, BET Awards afterparty.