Features

 

10 Jan 2011

 

 

Taxman

 

Reggae is a massive influence on modern dance music. Without it, there'd be no drum & bass, no dubstep, no dancehall, no breakbeat. I love reggae, and I particular like it when today's producers pay homage to the music by sampling the sounds of reggae and dub. A great example is Too Bad by Taxman, and the even more brilliant VIP version. The production is tight and heavy, but I think Taxman would agree that what makes the tune so good is the sample, "you're too bad, you're too rude". So where's the sample from?
 
Contrary to what some people think, it's not by Bob Marley. In fact, Marley died a full six years before the song was first released. The track, called Bad Boys, is by Jamaican reggae band Inner Circle and came out on their 1987 album One Way. It's hugely well-known because since 1989 it has featured as the theme tune to US TV show COPS, a documentary programme that films the activities of US police, and which is one of the longest-running shows in US TV history. The song also appears in the comic action film Bad Boys, featuring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, as well as the sequel.
 
The sample is taken from about three minutes in. The line "you're too bad, you're too rude" is only sung twice, but there's so much soul in those few words that it can sustain an entire Taxman track that's almost twice as long as the original song. The singer, whose voice is often mistaken for Marley's, is Calton Coffie. He was not the original frontman, having only joined the group in 1986 as a late replacement for the band's original singer, Jacob Miller, who died in a car crash in 1980. Miller had fronted the band since it was formed in Jamaica in 1968.
 
Inner Circle, who sometimes perform as The Bad Boys of Reggae, are now based in Miami. They still keep up a hectic touring schedule, having just released a new album State of Da World.




 


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