King Jammy
Lloyd James grew up on the same street as King Tubby in Waterhouse around 1959, learning electronics by watching the older man work. "I saw him doing his work and I got interested in it," he told United Reggae. "So I started doing some and started learning the trade." He built amplifiers for sound systems as a teenager, spent the early seventies working in a Canadian TV repair shop, then returned to Kingston in 1976 to set up his studio in his in-laws' home on St Lucia Road. Working from a converted room with foam padding on walls and a mixing board scavenged from Tubby's old setup, he produced "Under Mi Sleng Teng" in 1985 and ushered in dancehall's digital era. When Noel Davey and Wayne Smith brought him a Casio MT-40 keyboard riddim on December 5, 1984, Jammy slowed it to reggae tempo and created the track that would be versioned over 450 times. He dominated production throughout the 1980s and 1990s, working with Admiral Bailey, Frankie Paul, Lieutenant Stitchie, Pinchers, and essentially anyone who mattered in dancehall.