Can't Stop Us Now

Linval Thompson was a multi-talented singer and producer whose skills behind the mixing board and fondness for simple, rugged rhythms had a major influence on the sound of early dancehall. During the mid-‘70s, the young singer studied studio engineering while cutting sides with first-rate Jamaican producers like Phil Pratt, Bunny Lee, and Lee Perry. He proved to be a fast learner, and by the end of the ‘70s he began to produce his own material and release it on the self-run Thompson Sound imprint. Before long, his reputation as a first-rate producer and honest businessman began to attract flocks of aspiring artists to his label. The material he cut with up-and-coming singers and deejays like Barrington Levy, Triston Palmer, Eek-A-Mouse, and others placed him in the very front rank of dancehall producers. The stripped-down, dancehall-filling sounds that Thompson crafted with his backing band The Roots Radics were excellent candidates for remixing. Some of the most engaging cuts on Can’t Stop Us Now—such as Johnny Osbourne’s “Night Fall"—feature extended dub mixes from Scientist, a former King Tubby protégé who came into his own in the early ‘80s.