The music business is about money, like everything else is. Especially so when new music actually causes a cultural explosion, with top performers like Drake, Pitbull and Justin Bieber jumping onto a billion-dollar beat.

The Caribbean has produced three musical phenomena in the past century, each of which radically altered the musical scene of the region - and beyond!

Trinidad did this when it invented the first new musical instrument in decades - steel pan; Jamaica also did it in the radical 70s, à la Bob Marley and the Wailers, when reggae burst upon the scene; and a reggae-Spanish fusion has most recently birthed the third iration: Reggaeton!

Each time is quite unnatural, actually, yet explosively delightful. Like a buzzing musical arrhythmia.

This third, ongoing example at hand is equally about respect, cash and cultural impact.

This lyrical trifecta is playing out at high stakes as we speak.

The Billion-Dollar Beat

The monetary value of the disputed reggaeton beat is especially relevant because the plaintiffs argue that distinctive musical elements from their work were copied across hundreds of recordings without proper authorisation.

Jamaican dancehall vs Reggaeton: both started out as reggae’s adopted sons, but is there now a sibling rivalry - a Cain vs Abel fight?

The court case underway shows that the now-classic beat was first laid down, pardon the pun, by two yardies, Steely & Clevie (Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson and Cleveland “Clevie” Browne), at The Mixing Lab studio in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1989.

In so doing, they inadvertently created the most tribal modern beat ever, one that, when combined with an electric persona (singer Shabba Ranks), forged a whole new, unruly stylistic pattern. One that, when sped up, can be used in trap, house and other popular genres.

Would I be a Rude Boy if I said this was a rare seminal occurrence?!

Dancehall’s roots initially budded half a century ago, with a drum pattern that was simple yet addictive.

It was always rawer, and slightly faster than roots reggae - Dem Bow pumps at roughly 95 beats per minute compared with around 85 bpm for classic reggae.

The initial Dem Bow rendition was based on the instrumentals of Jamaica’s Fish Market/Poco Man rhythms. But now, the recent bilingual iration struck a visceral mainline that jumped coastlines, languages and ethnicities, then erupted into an untapped flow of pulsating energia...Si, claro!

So, Who Owns Dem Bow?

So, to touch on the ongoing litigation...

The Jamaican relatives of the reggae genesis have come to see their ancestor’s beat go “large”, and the accompanying lucrative fiscal possibilities ringing up by the hour.

So, here comes the case brought by Clevie Browne, the estate of his late musical partner Steely Johnson and other plaintiffs against some of reggaeton’s biggest names.

This has resulted in one of the broadest copyright disputes to hit the modern music industry. The plaintiffs have sued major record companies including Sony, Universal and Warner, along with more than 100 artists. Their claim covers roughly 1,800 reggaeton songs that they allege copied distinctive elements of Steely & Clevie’s work without permission, royalties or attribution.

And they aren’t simply claiming ownership of a generic musical pattern. The plaintiffs argue that a specific combination of elements - including the kick, snare and drum programming is sufficiently original to be protected by copyright. The defendants dispute that claim, arguing that the elements are commonplace musical building blocks that cannot be monopolised.

While defendants argue, there’s a chance that many of the claims will be settled out of court, with secret clauses and cheques. Industry sources say the labels are already paying small per-stream “riddim fees” for any new releases. They must now also give credit on new reggaeton songs to “Steely & Clevie”.

But that isn’t all. The early “Gasolina” / Luny Tunes royalty fights are more protracted, for the 2000s mixtapes had no contracts, so those producers and artists are fighting each other over who created what. For example, one sound engineer claims he added the “Gasolina” drum pattern and is owed the most “points”.

There are now an increasing number of TikTok and YouTube takedowns as several viral reggaeton tracks get pulled because they directly sampled Shabba yelling “Dem Bow!” - without clearance. Labels are now getting paranoid because of the ever-expanding scope.

Shabba’s original rawness on his own music video and audio platforms has amassed tens of millions of views and streams. Never mind the multi-millions of other artistes and fans still being added into the reggaeton explosion, as the ghetto beat carries on to newer hits like Natti Natasha’s bumping track “Criminal”.

While no Dem Bow cheques have as yet been paid out in this landmark reggaeton music lawsuit, the central legal battles are ongoing but have not reached final verdicts or settlements.

Because the lawsuits are still active in the court system, no monetary damages or settlements have yet been awarded to plaintiffs.

In July, U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr ruled that a jury should decide key questions over whether the musical combination claimed by the plaintiffs is protected by copyright and whether it was copied.

But the issue remains unsettled. In August, after lawyers for Bad Bunny and other defendants asked him to reconsider, Birotte said he would take several weeks to decide whether to reverse his earlier ruling.

This will decide if the now-iconic beat is legally protected by creative copyright. Even so, lawyers for defendants like Bad Bunny, Daddy Yankee and Karol G are arguing that the lawsuit is an attempt by the Jamaicans to cash in on generic musical building blocks that are common to the genre. Bad Bunny’s lawyers recently requested a reconsideration of the jury trial ruling, arguing the plaintiffs are trying to claim a “Frankenstein” copyright across multiple separate works.

Regardless, duppy knows who to frighten, so the yardie families are pushing forward at full speed.

Rawness, Rhythm and Shabba

The Dem Bow beat is pure rawness, if such a term exists. That low and slow boom, with a dip, a wheel and another dip! Like a heartbeat dripping into a hot Guinness, or sipping beachside on a frozen concoction with a yard uncle, his nephew and friends.

It was so coined and forged as “Dem Bow” - like the first carbon footprint leading into a new musical genus...emanating from a contrived combination of the three Jamaican musical geniuses.

And now, Shabba seems to make them all Bow Down, even if inadvertently, to this fantastical electronic beat.

What Was Shabba Actually Saying?

Furthermore, for those who bother with trivialities like lyrical content, it must be noted that almost every word of the Dem Bow track is an offensive macho statement. The first command (repeated) is especially machismo: “Chesback!” (i.e. nah ben dung) “All bowsie, me off with you!”

OK. Admittedly, the uninitiated will say it’s a Jamaican protest song - against “slackness/dutty living” that is despised by the Rasta community (of which ballhead Shabba professes to belong). The main targets of the oral iration are women (and men) who dip to the 69th degree...i.e. Bowers.

Regardless, the beat’s simple syncopation is off the chart, for real! The two namesake words are repeated in unison almost 40 times in the 3.5-minute-long Dem Bow song.

Mixed in are raw references to human acts of entanglement, which are also mentioned critically - and for almost an equal number of times.

To be fair, everything and everyone is fair game for Mr Ranks. After all, he is still billed as “Mr Lover Man”, also known as “Champion Lover”. The punchy song aggressively decimates and attacks skettel gal dem, Black oppressors, yo maddah, solaja buoy rifle, unclean food, even athletes! It’s a wonder that politicians were not included - but then, iykyk - even dancehall stars and ghetto life yout nah ramp wit no ’tricks!

Foundational to the song’s organic strategy was the basic fact that most Jamaican recording artists couldn’t afford live studio bands decades ago, or even now. What they could do was flip and loop a strong beat into a whole song, as they’d been doing with numerous other beats for many years.

For half a century now, whenever a top-ranking instrumental beat emerges, wannabe stars in Jam would line up around the block, straight to the studio doors, recording cash in hand, for a one-time shot at riding it. In so doing, they could compete and compare/contrast lyrically their performative prowess against their dancehall peers, while sharing the same unpredictable interpretative foundation on the same beat pattern.

Now hear this, tho: In all my years of enjoying the Dem Bow bass track, I had NO idea that those were the stated masochistic words or themes until my deep analysis for this article on the ongoing ownership lawsuit.

While I enjoyed Shabba’s original hits, the punch of the almost sacrilegious early reggaeton movement that emanated from Dem Bow was lyrical rawness, but with a sexy Spanish twist. Even so, no one questioned the ownership or claimed legitimacy when the move was made to use it as a Spanish inversion.

Dem Bow was just that great!

A completely new earworm was born almost simultaneously in Panama and Puerto Rico. The U.S., via Puerto Rico, soon followed. First named, Spanish Reggae, it was a fanciful description of a dusty street sound, newly minted.

My lack of earlier awareness of the song’s lyrical content may be forgivable - even decades later - probably like the U.S. censors and liberals found, this obfuscation was probably due to the heavy yard-core pronunciations. I had no clue that the song title translates as “They Bow”.

It actually sounded as much Spanish as English.

This was also partly due to the singer’s harsh pronunciation...instead of sounding like a ship’s bow, it is enunciated as a BOW - like on a gift!

Regardless, the revealed meaning, thanks to modern captions on music videos, is an open slur on those of the alternative or pernicious lifestyles. This wasn’t just a clapback, but a double-barrelled pimp-slap.

And remember, this music also emerged during the AIDS/HIV pandemic.

I should note that, to yardie anti-bowers (and pro pum-pumers), the Dem Bow concept was so strong at one point that it soon carried into other hits, like “Under the Sycamore Tree” of the 1990s, as well as Admiral Bailey’s “Gimme Punaney”.

It was a ghetto-fabulous moral stance that carried across to other beats and artistes like Mr Vegas’ “Heads High” hit, in which he appropriately chose the “Filthy Riddim” beat for his lyrics.

Wheel and Come Again...

Before venturing further into the venerable Reggaeton theme song here, I’d like to share an oft-overlooked fact about Reggae music and Caribbean music in general.

When Borrowing Was the Business

In the formative post-plantation years, when Caribbean steel pan yards and reggae rebels were emerging, there were no copyright laws, and the sharing/stealing/borrowing of rhythm and rhymes was commonplace.

Nothing malicious, really. A catchy American or English mainstream tune could just as easily be picked up and shipped around the Caribbean by a melanated sailing minstrel, played on beaches and for girls and carousers in every port. Or, it could have been extracted from the .45 records shipped in from Texas, Alabama, New York City or Florida bringing to the isles everyone from Sam Cooke to Elvis.

But in Jamaica, instead of wearing out the jukebox needles on the original Top Ten songs, the rural artistes loved to display their musical talents by re-recording the imported hits of every genre...from soul and country to rock and swing, thereby creating original songs in local styles - with amazing outcomes (check Beenie Man’s “Not gonna figure it yet”).

These new “chunes” were quickly pressed onto local 45 rpm records and blasted over massive sound systems by DJs on the island.

Unfortunately, most of those early remixes weren’t, or couldn’t be, preserved or recorded professionally or legally.

The Cayman Connection

As far as the early Cayman music scene was concerned, this was a smaller but also interesting phenomenon.

There are names like Radley Gourzong and Laten “Duxie” Ebanks, recipient of the CNCF’s first Musical Pioneer Award. In addition to crafting catboats and the riggers of early native life, he built fiddles and guitars from scratch - including goat-skin drums (one of which he made for the young, now-infamous, Aunt Julia - whom they brought into the fold of male musicians).

I say this time was interesting, for modern iterations of Cayman’s “traditional music” were similarly borrowed; for example, a now-beloved song: “Conch Na Got No Bone”.

Many compatriots mistakenly think this is a local tune. However, it is attributed to Goombay singer Blind Blake Higgs of the Bahamas, from the early 1950s.

What we probably did was reinterpret the lyrics and produce facsimiles in a local vernacular.

I have seen the chorus of the original stated as: “Ah ka ra ka., ku nay shee bamba, conch ain’t got no bone...”

Here, Caymanian troubadours transliterated this jibberish into: “Aunt Jemimah, go tell yo daddy, conch na got no bone...” (Interpretations of the meaning vary.)

And so...every region has a unique music. Check how the Banaca boys use the mouth organ and accordion in a zydeco-soca fusion. Or how dancehall converted a truck horn into a musical instrument.

But, just wait now, back to Dem Bow!

The now-famous four-beat track actually comes from infamous roots!

Bob Marley’s own “One Drop” song remains a smash hit for its pure conscious simplicity. But it too has a punchy drop rhythm, abbreviated with a silent first note...a dropped beat, which lent its name to that same “One Drop”!

Literally - the FIRST note is dropped silent!

Perhaps the main difference is that it was designed for a special “skenk” dance, a drop and hop! Regardless, by comparison, the raunchy Dem Bow gyrations are an affront to what the song actually intended.

From Reggae to Reggaeton

This extended loop has become the concrete foundation for “reggaeton” - a mix of reggae, hip-hop and Latin percussion.

The resulting phenomenon resonates with the new millennium. Notable adaptations were Ivy Queen’s “Quiero Bailar” in 2003, which crossed gender and language barriers, and Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina”, which hit more than 500 million online views and opened doors in the U.S. and Europe. While other youths sampled it in ghettos and barrios alike, Don Omar’s “Danza Kuduro” followed in 2010.

In the new wave from 2017 to the present, producers have sped it up, added trap-hats and Afro-drums, but the heartbeat is still “Dem Bow”.

J Balvin also had a hit with “Mi Gente”, as Bad Bunny did with “Yo Perreo Sola” in 2020, and then “Tití Me Preguntó”.

Other notable hits were Karol G with “Bichota” and “TQG”, and Rauw Alejandro’s “Todo De Ti”.

To the chagrin of purists, Dem Bow has even mixed with pop; it is featured by K-pop groups, Afrobeats and even electronic dance music (EDM) drops.

It’s now the most exported Caribbean rhythm ever...even overtaking its grandpa - Roots, Rock, Reggae!

Who Gets the Final Cheque?

For the time being, the new generation of musical inheritors, especially the kin of Steely and Clevie, await the passing back of the beat’s baton to Jamaica.

So that’s it!

Until the final gavel drops on Dem Bow, and the final cheque is cut, the only thing left to say for now is: “Wah dam a say! Shabba!”