Before Super Cat became the Don Dada, he made Jamaica laugh at the man picking up the bill.
“Boops”, his barbed take on the older man buying affection with gifts, turned a Jamaican expression for a sugar daddy into the stuff of a national talking point. Now, the forthcoming reissue of Boops!, Skengdon Records’ first album release, is reopening a formative chapter in the dancehall star’s story.
Due through VP Records on November 20, alongside albums by Nicodemus and Little John, the release completes Skengdon’s digital album rollout. It will be followed by Skengdon Anthology — The Sound System • The Studio • The Legacy, planned for the first quarter of 2027.
Behind the familiar title lies a history involving two producers, a fiercely competitive recording scene and a song that found its feet before it reached the studio.
According to music executive Maxine Stowe, “Boops” emerged on the Stereo Mars sound system, where Super Cat and Nicodemus performed with selector Danny Dread.
“We had already started recording Super Cat for Skengdon with ‘Vineyard Party’ and were developing material for his first album. Winston Riley came into that competitive environment and recorded ‘Boops,’ turning what had emerged on Stereo Mars into one of the biggest hits in Jamaica,” Stowe recalled.
Riley’s recording appeared on the Techniques album Si Boops Deh! The subsequent Skengdon album, Boops!, belongs to a separate chapter of the recording story.
Kenneth “Skengdon” Black remembers the breakthrough as “a national phenomenon”.
“Everywhere you went, people were talking about Boops. The expression entered everyday language, other artists were making answer records, and the excitement went far beyond the dancehall. Riley deserves credit for recognizing its commercial potential and producing the breakthrough recording, but the song’s creative origins were on Stereo Mars,” Black said.
Stereo Mars supplied an exacting rehearsal room. Danny Dread’s mixing created openings for Super Cat’s phrasing, cutting the rhythm and restoring it as the deejay worked the microphone. Nicodemus brought a complementary voice and, in Stowe’s account, an important influence on Super Cat’s pacing.
The audience supplied the verdict. A performance could acquire its character in the dance, with the response helping to establish which ideas might travel further.
“Dancehall was very competitive in those days. The sound systems were developing artists, producers were competing for the next big record, and everybody was trying to establish their own sound,” Black said.
That competition sat alongside a network of working relationships. Sugar Minott’s Youth Promotion, Stereo Mars and Skengdon were distinct ventures, but their activities intersected through artistes, musicians and people prepared to invest in them.
Stowe’s work with Minott connected her to a community in which emerging talent developed through performances, recordings and contacts extending into the diaspora. Black’s enterprise brought further resources to equipment, studio work and releases.
Skengdon’s operation subsequently stretched between Jamaica and Miami. Black worked with Roger Lewis and Inner Circle’s studio before developing his own SKD facilities, supporting a catalogue made across both locations.
Recordings including “Vineyard Party” and “Mud Up” preserve the rhythmic confidence and distinctive delivery that would remain recognisable as Super Cat’s career moved towards a larger international audience.
For Stowe, the reissue also retraces her own professional journey. After working within Jamaica’s music industry and at VP Records, she entered Columbia’s artiste and repertoire operation, where Super Cat became her first signing.
His 1992 album Don Dada carried that sound-system authority into the American major-label arena. Collaborations and remixes involving Heavy D, Kris Kross and the performers on the “Dolly My Baby” remix helped connect his Jamaican sound with US hip-hop.
The wider team included manager and producer Robert Livingston, Columbia product manager Karen Mason and the label’s A&R leadership. Stowe brought an understanding of the musical culture from which her signing had emerged.
The forthcoming Boops! reissue returns to an earlier point in that journey, when the international profile was still ahead but the voice was already unmistakable.
For listeners, it offers another encounter with the foundations of the Don Dada. For Stowe and Black, it is also a chance to put the people, places and competing records back in their proper order.
Long before the major-label machinery arrived, Super Cat had learned how to command a crowd. The rest of the world would catch up.
