Popcaan Keeps Dancehall Moving Forward—With Its Roots Intact
Popcaan is always in motion, but his voice beckons home. When he answers my call last Friday, a week after the release of Forever, his second studio album, the prolific dancehall singer is quick to tell me he’s in the car. As if to confirm the veracity of his claim, an unknown vehicle in the background honks its horn seconds later. The sound interrupts our conversation with an abrupt blare. When I ask where he’s headed, the artist born Andrae Sutherland adopts a high, singsongy tone crackling with amusement: “I’m goooo-iiiiing for some billions, for the gloooory.”
Answering questions with rhythm and flair has long been Popcaan’s calling card. It was, after all, a jovial call-and-response that first ushered the St. Thomas Parish–born singer into dancehall fans’ regular rotation back in 2010. Vybz Kartel, the multiplatinum “king of the dancehall” born Adidja Azim Palmer, shouted out a young Sutherland on “Clarks,” the impossibly catchy dedication to the sensible British shoe brand beloved by Jamaicans across the world. “Wha gwan, Popcaan?” the Portmore-bred Kartel asked on the track’s intro, before ceding the mic to Popcaan for the pre-hook. “Deh yah enuh hot skull, but tell me something,” Popcaan mused, before asking Palmer, “A where you get that new Clarks there Addi?”
Their banter is a friendly exchange in which Popcaan answers Kartel’s introductory inquiry by homing in on the real issue of import—where Kartel acquired his fly-ass shoes. But the single was also’s Portmore music empire in 2008, had been thrust into the limelight so forcefully by his mentor. And his introduction was a hit. Where Kartel’s voice rumbled gruff and powerful, Popcaan’s favored higher registers and more rounded delivery (as does the verse from his fellow featured artist Gaza Slim). Both Popcaan and Gaza Slim also co-wrote the track with Kartel. The interplay was magnetic. The song captured—and maintained—listeners’ attention, becoming a radio hit internationally. In the singers’ native Jamaica, the success of the song sent the shoes’ popularity rocketing so high that, months later, Popcaan it was impossible to “go less than $10,000 Jamaican for Clarks” (or about $115 USD, a notable markup from the pre-“Clarks” price of roughly $68 USD). By late 2010, Popcaan had arrived on the scene, but he wasn’t done stepping into his role as one of dancehall’s all-stars.
