Shinehead's ‘Jamaican in New York’: The Circularity of Jamaican and African American Cultural Practice and Reggae's Resonance in Hip Hop from The Bronx to Brooklyn, and Beyond

The singer, MC and deejay Shinehead (Edmund Carl Aiken) was born to Jamaican parents in 1962 and raised in The Bronx. Recognized as one of the first artists to fuse reggae and hip-hop sounds, style and lyricism together, in turn he was a key contributor to a subgenre of reggae and hip-hop fusion, sometimes referred to as raggamuffin hip-hop, which emerged across the 1980's and proliferated through to the middle of the following decade.

Shinehead's biggest hit was the 1992 song ‘Jamaican in New York’, a cover of Sting and The Police's ‘Englishman in New York’. I detail aspects of the song's wider historical social, cultural and musical significance in light of Jamaica's “second mass migration” after 1965. Further, the chapter highlights the increasing resonance and permeance of reggae and Jamaican culture in New York, and the proliferating dialogue, intersections and fusion in and between reggae and hip hop culture in The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and beyond.

Keywords: Biltmore Era ; Caribbean American ; Cultural hybridity ; Flatbush, Brooklyn ; Jamaican American ; Jamaican deejay ; Jamaican diaspora ; Jamaican migration ; Jamaican sound system culture ; New York ; New York Hip Hop ; Raggamuffin Hip Hop ; Reggae's delayed US reception