The Trojan Upsetter boxset makes me realize why hipsters care so much more about Scratch than Bob Marley: it's not simple contrariansm - because sloughing off a genre's most popular artist for an artist an argument could be made for still being one of the genre's five most well-known artists in the white world (and who collaborated with said G'sMPA), even ignoring the wildly different roles they play in their respective music, isn't just crappy contrarianism, it's Scaruffism (the Beatles are wildly overrated and suck because they're famous! Listen to more obscure music, ya' punks! The Doors' debut is still one of the greatest rock albums ever, however...) but, anyway, the point is that the reason Lee Perry is Thee Official Kool Dude in Jamaican Music to so many people like me is 'cuz he's really friggin' weird! You don't really realize just how strange he is until you get to the more recent tracks at the end of the box set, like "Time Marches On" and "For Whom the Bells Tolls," where Perry just rambles (with lots of overdubs) over a static beat for anywhere between four and eleven minutes (sample lyric from the latter: "love your poop, say poop poop poop poop poop poop.") It's not the culture shock strangeness that sometimes is detected by white ears listening to Caribbean music, it's good old fashioned ODB-level "this guy's either on something or his mother was while pregnant with him" weirdness, and so why wouldn't we, being weird people ourselves, find that sort of thing way more resonant than any old clean-cut, gee-whiz, normal-pants dude like Bob? Who wants "No Woman No Cry" when you could have "love your poop say poop poop poop poop poop poop?"

Anyway, that Kiki Gyan comp from a few years ago is probably better than its reputation would suggest: it seems peeps come in expecting the typically African elements to be more noticeable and instead get really really great disco that could've been from anywhere. But I just wanted disco, not afro-anything, and I got my money's, err, my mouseclicks + time's worth, and then some.