Shabba is the ultimate exemplar of the human voice as instrument-in his case, a bass instrument. If you were going to sound the depths of that crater, however, you’d have to start with his profound and overlooked musicality. In the current soundscape of Sean Kingston and Major Lazer, its difficult to even imagine the strangeness of his sudden appearance on MTV, his presence multiplied into inifinity as he posed off in a classically Jamaican splay-footed stance, chin cocked forward, nostrils fl ared with regal disdain, eyes hidden by tinted Lennon specs, and with a center-parted yet asymmetrical coif that can only be described as a Frankenstein fade. But the impact crater he left on pop culture is hard to measure only because its circumference is so damn big. He was a skit on In Living Color and a running joke on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in both cases his name serving as lazy shorthand for being too black and too ugly. In 2010, Shabba Ranks is mostly remembered outside dancehall circles not so much as a person or an artist, but as a cultural moment, like new jack swing or rave gear.
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