'The Pen' Returns

Hopeton Lindo aka ‘The Pen’ is an extraordinary singer-producer-songwriter. “Turf is getting good rotation all over the world, I just did a special for Radigan, and the song is doing very well in the United Kingdom,” he explained.

Lindo appears to be particularly pleased with the album single, ‘I’m So Proud’, a remake of a Curtis Mayfield classic.“If he were to hear it, he would be proud,” he said with a sheepish grin.

Everybody’s got their favourite single from the album. “Elise Kelly from IRIE FM loves Silent Consent and Turf, she plays them often,” he said. However, other socially conscious songs such as ‘Stand Up for Love’ gets wonderful reviews. He performed this song during TVJ’s ‘Your Issues Live’ show with Michael Sharpe which was broadcast from Florida.

A hitmaker of no mean order, Lindo continues to churn out the number ones. Silent Consent was actually #1 for 12 weeks on the Florida reggae charts, while ‘Love Chat’ was #1 on WAVS. Both singles were produced by Willie Lindo. Syl Gordon of Cell Block helped to produce most of the singles of Hopeton Lindo’s ‘Turf’ album.

“I have been doing quite a few singles in the last couple of years so we felt it was time to come with an album,” he said.

A video for ‘Turf’ directed by Roger B was shot and is now in regular rotation on RE, HYPE, Music Plus and a myriad of other cable stations. Three weeks ago, he performed at the Crowning of Downbeat in the Club Amazura in New York, and last week, he performed alongside dancehall stalwarts like Spragga Benz, Vegas and Wayne Wonder during the Waggy T anniversary dance in South Beach, Miami.

“The Club Amazura got a good crowd even though it was snowing and that may have affected the turnout…the promoters looked happy,” he said.

Another UB40 member exit the band

British reggae band UB40 has lost another member after its keyboard player quit amidst a row over money.

Michael Virtue said he was "extremely disappointed" to be leaving the group, but was not happy with the way their finances were being handled.

His decision comes just months after the departure of 48-year-old lead singer Ali Campbell. <

Virtue said: "I can no longer work with the management team and I am joining Ali Campbell in his investigation into the handling of the band's business affairs.

"I am very upset to be leaving the band, who have been like family for the last 30 years, but feel under the circumstances that this was the only option left open to me.

"I have been unhappy with the way things have been run for many years and wanted to get to the bottom of the bands' business affairs, which I have been unable to do."

Frontman Campbell also cited difficulties with the band's management as his reason for leaving two months ago, but did join UB40 in February to play final dates in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Virtue admitted he had to contact Campbell last week because the singer had not been in touch with the band since playing with them at their last concert in Uganda.

The band released their own statement in January, blaming Campbell for the split saying that his work on a solo project had begun to conflict with their work.

But Virtue now says: "It certainly cannot be said that I am leaving to pursue a solo career and neither did Ali. Suffice to say, I am extremely disappointed."

The Birmingham-based band have sold 70 million albums worldwide and have had three number ones with Red Red Wine, I Got You Babe and (I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You.

From age six Collie Buddz 'a come around'

Colin Harper, also known as Collie Buddz has a rock-solid foundation in reggae - and its power to connect ghetto reality with the highest heights of human aspiration.

Born in 1981, Collie was immersed in the sound system culture since the age of 6. "I used to come home from primary school and my brother would always be on the turntables, playing his new 45's an' I'd just be there vibesin," he revealed.

The evolution of dancehall and the sound-clash culture, into a movement of it's own in the late 1980s and early 1990s set the backdrop for young Collie's discovery of his own identity; and the dancehall kings of that generation, Buju Banton, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man, served as his primary influences. "Back when Beenie and Bounty used to war lyrically, seeing clashes wit' Kilimanjaro an all the sound-man an' everything...the whole music scene for me took on a new meaning. Clash thing an' lyrical war became a part of my daily life from early out."

The daily operation of trading lyrics in schoolyard clashes quickly gave way to more serious combat as, "...people started sayin 'Ay, Buddz got some lyrics!" From an early age, some of the local sounds on the island wanted to get me on dub plate," says Collie, who stepped into the first of many vocal booths at age 16 to voice customized dubs for some Bermudian sounds. "Sounds was always trying to buss local artists in Bermuda." Consistent encouragement from the various sound men and engineers he encountered on those dub excursions led Collie to maintain a musical focus and eventually trek to Florida for a degree in audio engineering, a path that ended behind the boards of his own Bermudian studio, jointly run with his older brother (Smokey) and Sneek Success from one of Bermuda's founding sounds, 'Newclear Weapon.'

Building riddims for other artists only expanded his love for writing and voicing his own lyrics however. "I used to make these beats an none of the tunes came out how I pictured an artist sittin on de riddim, so I decided to start to get in the booth myself again and spit some lyrics. Unless my brother engineerin' for me, I'm runnin from the board to the booth, back to the board!" Like boot camp for a one-man army, that experience molded the signature vocal style that defines Collie Buddz – a songwriter who can lay his own riddim, sing the hook and chat on the verse.

"I build de riddim first and while I'm building it I don't try an' think about lyrics 'cause I'm trying to focus on the riddim, yunno? I make it sound as best I can and then for a day or two I rest my ears then start de writing process. I come up with a melody firs' and get that down, then start with the lyrics." The skill with which he compartmentalizes multiple roles in the studio also extends to his
easy movement between styles.

A falsetto that combines the singsong lover's rock appeal of a carnival crooner like Rupee with the deeper emotional catch of Bob Marley or Sizzla, Collie's voice sits with equal comfort over the jump-up pace of ragga-soca, 4/4 hip-hop beats or an achingly slow one drop. Most strikingly on tunes like "My Everything" he finds both the drive of dancehall and the bluesy edge of roots in a frenetic polyrhythm built around the Latin horns of David Bowie's "Let's Dance" an up-tempo track that could be just as at home in a Trinidad carnival as in a UK discothèque. "Some tunes I create are just to show that I could do anything I put my mind to," he explains "to show the versatility of my style."

"Nowadays when I go to put on a CD, its old tune: Alton Ellis, The Meditations, The Heptones, Skatalites, Jacob Miller, Eric Monty Morris; love the rockers music. From that I start to teach myself some of the history of this music, that's where I started to come a little more versatile with the singin'...the foundation just straight reality, yunno. I like dancehall, but de foundation and conscious tune really what me love."

Born in New Orleans but raised in Bermuda, dancehall singer Collie Buddz was entranced by the urban music of his island home. He favored dancehall the most, but soca and hip-hop were important too, all of which exploded out the speakers of his DJ brother. His brother was also involved in recording Collie's demo track, "Come Around", an infectious song that blew up in Europe and topped the charts in the U.K. before it came to Jamaica.

As the marijuana anthem was climbing the JA charts all the way up to number one, rapper Busta Rhymes cut his own, unauthorized remix, which increased the track's presence on urban American radio. Guest vocals on a remix of Beyonce's "Ring the Alarm" began his relationship with the Sony label. A guest appearance on an American rappers Lil' Flip latest album kept spreading the Collie Buddz name on the streets. Everything was in place as his second single, "Mamacita," and his self-titled debut album were both released by Sony in the summer of 2007.

toolbar powered by Conduit