Record of 1995

Book, Book, Book

Bounty Killer

Rodney Pryce had exploded on to the DJ scene back in 1993 with Roots, Reality & Culture, his first major hit. But 1995 was the year when he went head to head with another rising young DJ star, Beenie Man, setting up one of those DJ battles of the titans which, like U Roy and Big Youth, Cutty Ranks and Ninjaman, reggae music always seems to throw up.

Unquestionably Bounty Killer's greatest hit and finest achievement of that year was Book, Book, Book. It starts with his trademark "Lawd have mercy", continues with an equally characteristic throaty chuckle and then with the drawled throwaway line "This one is very classic" he's off on a long exposition of the merits of education. "You love your education, this one is for you" he declares while in and out pops the high pitched juvenile chorus "Book, book, book" suggesting the eager voices of fresh faced, well scrubbed children marching off to their lessons.

This is part of a long line of Jamaican records like Prince Allah's Go To School, Mikey Campbell's Proper Education, and Prince Jazzbo's School that seek to impress upon the youth the need to further their lot through serious study, UK stars like Noel and Liam Gallagher might brag about how much trouble they got into but in Jamaica, a poor country with few resources, they take their education very seriously indeed. As Bounty Killer sings, ""You nah go school fi warm the bench and the chair." "You know a rectangle defend from a square" he continues, "pronounce your words dem loud and clear, with an education you gone clear." A rural "all-age" school might typically consist of a long shed containing three classes of sixty pupils each separated from the next by a washing line from which posters are clothes-pegged. So when Bounty Killer sings "Textbook have no dogears, dem no tear, you know dem expensive and dear", this is a reality lyric in the truest sense of the world.

"Big up all the youth at KC and Walmers" he continues, namechecking two of Kingston's more celebrated schools, and with "Big up all the youth at Tivoli Boys and Meadowbrook", two less celebrated places of learning. All this to a deliciously wicked Jammys rhythm which would have the most straitlaced of Jamaica's hard pressed teachers cutting some unusual moves as she goes from desk to desk.

As the man says, "All who don' like school, you jus' dismissed!"

Geoff Parker, December 1999