The Story Behind The Song: How A Bevy Of Women Inspired Super Cat’s ‘Boops’
A bevy of women who were in pursuit of Super Cat’s mentor and fellow deejay Nicodemus served as the key inspiration behind the creative process that led to the Dancehall legend’s 1985 smash hit Boops.
Super Cat had unveiled the backstory behind the humourous and contentious Boops, which is not only one of his most iconic tracks but which ignited impassioned debates, inspired several counteraction records, and brought Super Cat international success.
“I was in Jamaica and a few girls were walking around when I was down in Hannah Town… So I was hanging out with him when he ‘returned from the dead’… and one of his girls, Sexylegs came from South with two of her friends and said “Where’s my Boops, Nicodemus? I hear he’s taking care of a lot of people round here’,” Super Cat had recounted.
“Nicodemus came out of the home and said: ‘Why you calling me them kind of names? Nicodemus is no Boops’. So then I went home in my area, and my sister was saying [to someone else]: ‘My Boops is looking you. I don’t feel go that you should like my Boops. It’s my Boops’. So I said ‘What is this Boops word?’ And someone said: “Well, Boops is when a man have a rich lady taking care of him or a rich man taking care of a lady”. So I said: ‘It’s the happening thing’,” he had added in the 2015 Reggaville interview.
As to how he came to record the song for Winston Riley, Super Cat had said that the late producer was the one who approached him, asking him to record some songs since he was among the hottest Dancehall artists at the time.
“I was coming from Stereo Mars with Danny Dreadlocks the great selector, we had a great night in Mandeville… So I was coming home that morning when Winston Riley – a great producer from Techniques – saw me somewhere close to Three Mile and Spanish Town Road. He was in a vehicle flagging us down and I said: “What happen?” and he said “Every corner I turn in Kingston it’s your things playing and now is the time. They need you. Time for recording studio”.
“I said “Yeah, still I don’t like the recording. It’s a problem. You go recording and then you never get paid. That’s the part of it I’m afraid of,” Super Cat had explained in the Reggaeville interview.
He added: “Still it did happen because I went to studio with him. I asked him what time he was working and he said it was a Wednesday. So I went there and gave him a quarter dozen songs which never failed me”.
Upon its release on Riley’s Techniques label, Boops, which made a mockery of sugar daddies and encouraged women to take advantage of them, became a big hit. The word itself subsequently became entrenched in the Jamaican lexicon.
The song helped to spawn the album Si Boops Deh which was released in 1986, also on the Techniques label. That album consists of songs such as Exerience Lover, Learn Fi Ride, Cry Fi Di Youth, Big and Ready and Trash and Ready.
One of Dancehall’s original rude boys, Super Cat, who hails from Cockburn Pen in Kingston’s inner-city, was a dominant deejay in the 1980s and up to the mid-1990s and served as a mentor to fellow deejay Ninja Man.
The Under Pressure deejay was one of Jamaica’s first Dancehall artists to go mainstream, forming alliances with hip-hop superstars, including Heavy D, P. Diddy, and Biggie Smalls.
In the 1990s, Super Cat relocated from Jamaica to New York, where he signed a deal 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.
The Wild Apache, whose given name is William Maragh, 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.
His friend Nicodemus who partially inspired Boops, released a string of albums in the 1980s and 1990s. Together, he and Super Cat became sparring partners in the duo “Nicodemus & Super Cat”. Among their collabs were Cabin Stabbin and My Prerogative.
Nicodemus died in August 1996, of diabetes-related complications.