Riddims That Slapped: Jeremy Harding’s ‘Playground’ Marks 25th Anniversary
This article is the second in a monthly series that will revisit ‘Dancehall Riddims That Slapped.’ This month, DancehallMag spoke with producer Jeremy Harding about his Playground riddim, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Previously, we explored Richard ‘Shams’ Browne’s ‘Orgasm’ riddim.
Over the years, Jeremy Harding’s home studio at 8 Jack’s Hill Road in Kingston has taken on a mythic quality. As the story goes, the fledgling producer moved into the one-bedroom apartment in the early ’90s, partitioning the space and furnishing it with the latest digital studio equipment. It then expanded into a commercial jingle factory, a bustling dubplate workshop, and a lab in which he was able to experiment with his own sound. It’s been said that the studio was the first to record music to computers in Jamaica – possibly even in the Caribbean.
Indeed, the apartment witnessed the birth of some of Dancehall’s most enduring recordings. But by the end of the summer of 1997, the hit song that Jeremy was chasing hadn’t yet materialized. Even months after the release of the now-classic Playground riddim, the popularity of Sean Paul’s Infiltrate seemed to be topping out locally; Mr. Vegas’ Nike Air was mostly dormant, and the voicing of Beenie Man’s Who Am I (Sim Simma) was still an event on the horizon.
Years prior, in 1993, Jeremy and his younger brother Zachary founded 2Hard Recordings, a record label under which they planned to release all their original music. The division of labour was simple: Jeremy oversaw music production while Zachary was tasked with networking and marketing. Naturally, 8 Jack’s Hill Road was the headquarters for this operation.
Those early years saw 2Hard Recordings costing Jeremy more than it earned him. The dubplate work he was doing paid alright, and the radio jingles did even better. But he had to self-finance the pressing and distribution of his own recorded music, and the returns were thin. Perhaps more frustrating for Jeremy was the fact that being a Dancehall producer wasn’t even at the top of his career list at the time; he wanted to produce hip-hop overseas.
He had been tethered to that dream since studying chemical engineering in Montreal in the late ’80s. While there, he worked as a disc jockey at McGill University’s CKUT 90.3FM, a station on which he played Reggae and Dancehall from back home alongside the latest hip-hop erupting from America’s streets. Jeremy leaned further into the local rap scene and learned how to produce by adapting his formal musical training to these new sample-heavy styles. He cut demos with a few of Montreal’s up-and-coming rappers and even opened shows for major acts like Public Enemy, House of Pain, and Ice Cube.
Years later, much of what Jeremy learned during his time in Canada drove the technique and sound behind his Dancehall work. Rather than conform to the dominant styles of either genre, he blended the two: he’d lift pieces of a drum pattern or keyboard flourishes from hip-hop records and refit them to his own Dancehall grooves. The Playground riddim testifies to this with its rolling bassline built around an 808 kick drum as well as a sample from the song Section by the hip-hop group The Roots.
After heading to Toronto and spending a year pursuing his dream there, Jeremy returned to Kingston in 1993, a move that tangled his ambitions with uncertainty. He set up shop at 8 Jack’s Hill Road, repurposing the equipment he brought from Canada to make jingles for local corporations. He also spent those first few months entertaining the idea that this was merely a speed bump on his road to hip-hop stardom.
At the same time, his younger brother Zachary had gotten involved with Syndicate Disco, an uptown sound system that often paired up with Renaissance Sound. Naturally, these sounds needed dubplates and they preferred to have them recorded cheap and fast. After Zachary made the introductions, Jeremy’s home studio quickly morphed into a dubplate hub, attracting selectors and artists from across the spectrum of Kingston’s music scene.
It was hard to beat Jeremy’s studio in terms of efficiency. His then-novel digital audio workstation allowed the sound systems to get their dubplates burnt to CDs, to split tracks left and right, and to get acapella versions made. Jeremy also learned how to produce in real-time by giving feedback to artists and recording multiple takes at little to no cost – another benefit of using digital over analog. Before long, sounds like Stone Love, Adonai, and King Addies were showing up at his front door.
Throughout this period, Zachary encouraged Jeremy to produce his own work. Creating a Dancehall riddim then typically required 4 to 5 people: the drummer or drum programmer; the bassist; the guitarist; the mixer; and perhaps a keyboardist. Jeremy could do it all with his computer, his Akai S950 sampler, his sequencer and a few records. On top of that, he had built links with the deejays through his dubplate work, so there was no shortage of artists to voice.
In 1995, Jeremy finally released the Fearless riddim on 45s. Issued through 2Hard Recordings, the versions included Girls Segment by Elephant Man and Harry Toddler of Scare Dem Crew; Let’s Talk About It by Swade; and Baby Girl by Sean Paul, then a little-known uptown artist whose sound bore an uncanny resemblance to Super Cat’s. While these versions didn’t make much of a splash – the demand didn’t warrant a CD release on VP Records until years later – the riddim itself became a hit among local sound systems. This motivated Jeremy to try again.
His next release was the Playground riddim in 1997. The slower-tempo beat may have straddled the line between hip-hop and Dancehall, but the artist’s performances embodied ragga in its purest form.
The biggest versions were all oriented towards the ladies: Spragga Benz shared the market-researched Long Performer; Mad Cobra unraveled his wish list on Pet and Pamper; and Lexxus praised his champion lover with Fade Away. Then there was Infiltrate by the newcomer Sean Paul. “All di man dem weh a bait jus get deflate / Sean Paul and 2Hard haffi set tings straight,” he proclaimed before rattling off his typical winking wordplay.
Up to that point, Sean had made a name for himself as part of the Dutty Cup Crew, which also consisted of the deejays Kurup, Looga Man, Mossy Kid, Mr. Chicken, and Daddigon. Jeremy had fallen into their orbit early on and split his time between producing the group and helping out as Sean’s de facto manager. The members had recorded versions of Playground together (Stick It Up by Looga Man and Mossy Kid) and solo (Sean’s Infiltrate and Kurup’s Trendsetter) and when Sean’s version from the batch began making the biggest waves, it had everyone’s support; a win for one Dutty Cup member was a win for them all.
It was also on the Playground riddim that Mr. Vegas debuted his distinctive singjay style, following the unwiring of his jaw. An often-repeated legend is that, after hearing Playground for the first time, Vegas demanded his doctor remove the wire so he could voice over it that same day. While this is unlikely, it is true that Nike Air almost never materialized in the first place.
Before his breakthrough, Mr. Vegas had recorded as part of a singer-deejay duo alongside Don Yute. The pair had been to Jeremy’s studio a few times, but they eventually split to pursue solo careers. Don Yute, then an established uptown artist and a friend of Jeremy’s, still frequented the studio and even cut a Playground version called Living In a Dream. But when Mr. Vegas showed up later with Nike Air in mind, Jeremy was less inclined to record his version. For one, Jeremy didn’t know Vegas very well; secondly, Jeremy felt that he had already recorded enough songs on the riddim.
Eventually, Jeremy relented and voiced Vegas. Afterwards, they agreed to release Nike Air as a B-side to Don Yute’s Living In a Dream on the 45s.
By the end of the summer of 1997, the hype surrounding the Playground riddim was stuck in second gear. So it came as a shock to Jeremy when, one morning, he was awakened by a phone call telling him that Beenie Man was on the way to his apartment to voice over the riddim. It was Mr. Chicken of the Dutty Cup Crew on the other line, and no matter how much excitement he poured into his voice, there was no convincing Jeremy through his morning daze. The producer hung up and went back to sleep.
A few minutes later, the buzzer to 8 Jack’s Hill Road rang out. Jeremy crept towards the front door with a growing sense that maybe Mr. Chicken was right. That feeling faded once he looked outside. There, filling the view of the peephole, was the face of Mankind, a Reggae artist who had been to Jeremy’s studio a few times to record dubplates. Jeremy slinked back to his room.
The whining buzzer lifted him out of bed again. When Jeremy returned to the peephole, Mankind was still outside, but he had stepped away from the door to reveal another figure standing beside him. Yes, there was no mistaking him – it was Beenie Man, then a leading candidate for the title of King of the Dancehall.
The sight of Beenie cranked the sleepless producer into action. He booted up his set-up and ushered the two men inside. Before long, Beenie’s wails were leaking out of the studio into the Kingston morning, all but certainly turning the heads of a few passersby in the process. Still, anyone lucky enough to hear Beenie Man knock out his version would have borne witness to history.
“Sim Simma, who got the keys to my Bimma?” he rhymed, putting his own spin on Missy Elliot’s earlier “Beep beep, who got the keys to my jeep?” He had seemingly shown up with the song’s lyrics already in mind, because he unloaded the three verses and the timeless chorus in a flash. That day, Beenie Man recorded nearly all of Who Am I (Sim Simma) in one take.
Word spread quickly. By midday, several of the Dutty Cup Crew members had flocked to Jeremy’s apartment to listen to Beenie’s latest triumph. There was added pride in the fact that it was Sean’s version that spurred Beenie Man to seek Jeremy out in the first place: after hearing Infiltrate at Mirage Night Club in Kingston, Beenie approached Sean and Mr. Chicken, asking something to the effect of, “Ah your ting dis?”
Jeremy knew he had a hit on his hands, so he made a copy on a Digital Audio Tape and rushed it to his friend Jerry Davy, who was live on air at RJR 94 FM that Friday night. Jerry readily played it, after which Jeremy thanked him and returned home. Jerry called Jeremy later that night, telling him to turn on his radio. Who Am I had seized the airwaves for two hours straight as listeners blasted the station’s phone lines, requesting that Jerry wheel back that new Beenie Man song.
By Monday, record stores in Kingston were feeling the shockwave, with buyers showing up in droves demanding 45s of Who Am I. Jason Lee, Jeremy’s distributor at Sonic Sounds, had to call the producer directly to find out what was going on with this supposed new Beenie Man record. Jeremy rushed the DAT tape down to the plant, which had six machines pressing various 45s at the time. For the rest of the week, Sonic Sounds halted production on every release aside from Who Am I. The machines were reserved exclusively for Kingston’s latest blockbuster.
Over the next few months, Who Am I ran Jamaican radio. The song also found a home among the hip-hop and R&B tracks in rotation on U.S. and U.K. urban and pop stations, a reception that helped elevate Beenie Man from a Dancehall sensation into a global juggernaut. It eventually peaked at No. 40 on the US Billboard Hot 100, No. 10 on the UK Singles Chart, and served as the lead single on Beenie Man’s Grammy-nominated album Many Moods of Moses, which he released that December.
That success trickled down to the other songs voiced on Playground. When the hype surrounding Who Am I lost steam in Jamaica in late 1997, the baton was passed off to Mr. Vegas’ Nike Air, which exploded into a street anthem for the next few months. That song established Vegas, who capitalized on the momentum by returning with the show-stopping Heads High the following year.
Though Sean Paul’s Infiltrate got a smaller boost from Who Am I’s success than Nike Air did, it still managed to introduce a new voice to Dancehall fans in Jamaica and overseas. Perhaps more substantial, however, was the fact that Beenie Man had not only recognized Sean’s talent but endorsed it as well. It was a watershed moment for the young deejay, for the other members of the Dutty Cup Crew, and by extension, for Renaissance Sound, which had supported the whole crew in those early days.
Few felt more vindicated than Jeremy himself. All the risks he had taken – with his business, with his sound, and even with his life path – were finally being rewarded. It was the British DJ David Rodigan who first called Jeremy to inform him of Who Am I’s impact in the UK. Opportunities to work with international acts followed the song’s commercial success, as did a healthy publishing deal with EMI.
Even today, 25 years after the release of Playground/Who Am I, artists and producers still use the riddim and its biggest version as a creative springboard for their own songs. Beenie’s “Sim Simma line” has been referenced and flipped countless times by rappers like Redman and Joyner Lucas, and Jeremy’s instrumental has been a cornerstone of hits like Krept & Konan’s 2015 hit, Freak of the Week.
In 2019, British Jamaican singer Mahalia paid homage to Who Am I with Simmer, which featured Burna Boy. The song, produced by Jonah Christian and Felix Joseph, carries the genre-blending torch sparked by Jeremy and Beenie back in 1997 by reimagining 90’s Dancehall in a modern R&B style. It was certified Silver in the UK in 2020.
So far, it’s Jeremy’s favorite reinterpretation:
Speaking to DancehallMag for this story, Jeremy Harding said this about Playground’s success: “It’s not like oh, I’m this genius and I figured out this way to make a crossover beat by using hip-hop elements. It wasn’t deliberate in that sense. It was just a matter of that being the only way I knew how to make a record, so the choices were informed by that.”
“I think a lot of times, people set out to say we’re making a crossover record. Then they try to reference a million things, and try this and try that. There’s no such thing as ‘making a crossover record.’ That’s nonsense. The records that cross over are the homegrown ones that are just good records.”
He continued: “The best thing you can do is just remember that you make music for people to love and appreciate, because we’re not making music just for ourselves. But at the same time, you gotta make something you love and then basically hope that everybody else will see your point of view.”