★★★★★
"Hi, my name is Yellowman, in the ghetto they call me Mr. Sexy," begins "Mad Over Me", the first track on Young, Gifted and Yellow. If you've not met Yellowman before, with this new collection VP Records provides a 40-song introduction. It also presents a case-- "nuff arguments", as Yellow would say-- for the relevance of 1980s dancehall and the importance of one of Jamaica's most well-known and well-loved deejays...
- pitchfork.com
2013-04-24
★★★★★
Let's start this with a history lesson: Jamaican deejays are the grandfathers of rappers. Jamaicans were chatting over instrumentals at sound systems before anyone in the U.S. thought of doing it. It was a Jamaican immigrant, DJ Kool Herc, who introduced the concept to kids in the South Bronx, only Herc would use breaks from popular funk and disco tracks rather than dubs. Those kids ran with the idea and took it much farther than early deejays Dennis Alcapone, King Stitt or U Roy had gone...
- rapreviews.com
2013-04-23
★★★★★
Yellowman does not stop. Literally bounding onto the stage of Moe's Alley, the "King of the Dancehall" tore through cut after cut after cut all while continuously jumping and dancing to an enthusiastic audience May 28 in Santa Cruz, Calif. The theme of the night for the Jamaican deejay seemed to be enthusiasm for life itself. He frequently told the audience "I love you." During "A Letter to Rosie" he changed the end from "'til the day I die" to "I love you til the day I- LIVE...
- www.punknews.org
2012-06-07
★★★★★
the man who invented slackness, for better and mostly worse ("Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt," "Zunguzung")
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
If Big Youth is the dread George Jessel, then the albino orphan who's supplanted him as JA's premier toaster is something altogether more waggish and blue, an unwitting amalgam of Eddie Cantor, Mae West, and Pigmeat Markham. Though groovemasters follow wherever he goes, his albums tend to run together because music isn't really the point, and neither is political or spiritual uplift...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Back in the early '80s, dancehall reggae was on the ascendant and there was still plenty of room for the outsize personalities that made the genre so irresistible in its heyday. One of the most flamboyant personalities ever to rock the dancehall was Yellowman (a.k.a. Winston Foster) who surely needs no introduction, since his domination of the dancehall in the early ?J80s was total...
- www.globalrhythm.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
Back in the early '80s, dancehall reggae was on the ascendant and there was still plenty of room for the outsized personalities that made the genre so irresistible in its heyday. Two of the most flamboyant personalities ever to rock the dancehall were Yellowman and Eek-A-Mouse, two very different performers who were united by the unstoppable production of Henry "Junjo" Lawes and Channel One Studio's legendary house band, the Roots Radics...
- www.globalrhythm.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
When Biggie once declared himself "heartthrob never, black and ugly as ever," I thought for years he was saying "fat" instead of "black...
- pitchfork.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
A History of Dancehall's Original Ruler. "This collection is a definitive guide to the early years of Jamaica's first DJ superstar. Yellowman, the first DJ to bring the dancehall style of reggae to the international arena, made 'slackness' his specialty and lyrics of graphic sexuality soon became his calling card. But to all who would criticize his vulgarity Yellowman responded 'slackness is we make love, so slackness bring everybody here'.
- www.forcedexposure.com
2009-06-08