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Ras Droppa, (born Samuel Richards), is a reggae musician, who has been involved in making and spreading music for almost 30 years.
Ras Droppa is one of 9 children born in Jamaica to shoemaker named Ellis Richards. Ellis taught his eight sons and one daughter to appreciate music and learn scales at an early age. The Richards children made up a successful band known throughout Jamaica as The Richards Brothers Band, and were featured on Jamaican television. Ras Droppa's musical talent earned him the role as band sergeant in school.
Ras Droppa's early influences were fellow Jamaican musicians Bob Marley, Aston "Family Man" Barrett, Garnett Silk, Sly Dunbar & Robbie Shakespeare (known as Sly and Robbie, Roland Alphonso and the Skatalites, and accomplished xylophonist and vibraphonist Lenny Hibbert who was Ras Droppa's music teacher.
Ras Droppa has performed with successful reggae artists Sugar Minott, Beres Hammond, The Congos, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Lucky Dube, Burning Spear, Aswad, Sly and Robbie, Jimmy Cliff, Yami Bolo, Dennis Brown, The Wailers, Cannibus Cup, Leroy Sibbles and Jr. Jazz, and has toured extensively throughout the world with artists like Anthony B, the Mighty Diamonds, Cocoa Tea, Half Pint and Sister Carol. [1]
Ras Droppa's music was featured in the independent film The Knee Shack.
Ras Droppa was featured in the June 2005 issue of Hi magazine.
In 2003 a state lottery cast Ras Droppa as a featured performer in a commercial to promote its "Winner Wonderland" campaign. The commercial involved a reggae version of the seasonal classic "Winter Wonderland" which Droppa performed.
Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word "reggae", effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political commentary. It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat and the offbeat rhythm section. The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rocksteady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.
The music of Jamaica includes Jamaican folk music and many popular genres, such as mento, ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub music, dancehall, reggae fusion and related styles.
Black Uhuru is a Jamaican reggae group formed in 1972, initially as Uhuru. The group has undergone several line-up changes over the years, with Derrick "Duckie" Simpson as the mainstay. They had their most successful period in the 1980s, with their album Anthem winning the first ever Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 1985.
The Congos are a reggae vocal group from Jamaica which formed as the duo "Ashanti" Roy Johnson (tenor) and Cedric Myton (falsetto), later becoming a trio with the addition of Watty Burnett (baritone), and have been active on and off from the mid-1970s until the present day. They are best known for their Heart of the Congos album, recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Michael Rose is a Grammy award-winning reggae singer from Jamaica. He is known for a successful tenure with Black Uhuru from 1977 to 1984, and he has worked regularly with Dennis Brown, Big Youth, The Wailers, Gregory Isaacs, Sly and Robbie, and others. He has also released more than twenty solo albums.
Lowell Fillmore "Sly" Dunbar is a drummer, best known as one half of the prolific Jamaican rhythm section and reggae production duo Sly and Robbie.
Sly and Robbie were a prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo, associated primarily with the reggae and dub genres. Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare teamed up in the mid-1970s after establishing themselves separately in Jamaica as professional musicians. Shakespeare died in December 2021 following kidney surgery.
Dennis Emmanuel Brown CD was a Jamaican reggae singer. During his prolific career, which began in the late 1960s when he was aged eleven, he recorded more than 75 albums and was one of the major stars of lovers rock, a subgenre of reggae. Bob Marley cited Brown as his favourite singer, dubbing him "The Crown Prince of Reggae", and Brown would prove influential on future generations of reggae singers.
Clancy Eccles was a Jamaican ska and reggae singer, songwriter, arranger, promoter, record producer and talent scout. Known mostly for his early reggae works, he brought a political dimension to this music. His house band was known as The Dynamites.
Robert Warren Dale Shakespeare was a Jamaican bass guitarist and record producer, best known as half of the reggae rhythm section and production duo Sly and Robbie, with drummer Sly Dunbar. Regarded as one of the most influential reggae bassists, Shakespeare was also known for his creative use of electronics and production effects units. He was sometimes nicknamed "Basspeare".
Leroy Sibbles is a Jamaican reggae musician and producer. He was the lead singer for The Heptones in the 1960s and 1970s.
Michael George Henry OD, better known as Ras Michael, is a Jamaican reggae singer and Nyabinghi specialist. He also performs under the name of Dadawah.
Channel One is a recording studio in Maxfield Avenue, West Kingston, Jamaica. The studio was built by the Hoo Kim brothers in 1972, and has had a profound influence on the development of reggae music.
Tommy McCook was a Jamaican saxophonist. A founding member of The Skatalites, he also directed The Supersonics for Duke Reid, and backed many sessions for Bunny Lee or with The Revolutionaries at Channel One Studios in the 1970s.
Jepther McClymont OD, better known as Luciano, is a Jamaican second-generation roots reggae singer.
Rolando Ephraim McLean, better known as Yami Bolo, is a Jamaican reggae singer.
Sidney Mills is a British Jamaican musician, performing mostly within the reggae genre and best known as a member of the roots reggae band Steel Pulse. Mills was born in the United Kingdom and moved to Jamaica as a child. He was raised in the Saint Thomas Parish, Jamaica and became a musician from an early age, moving to Kingston in the late 1960s to pursue a musical career. Sidney attended Kings College Kingston where he matured as a musician under the tutelage of the likes of Sonny Bradshaw.
Orville Richard Burrell CD, better known by his stage name Shaggy, is a Jamaican-American reggae singer who scored hits with the songs "It Wasn't Me", "Boombastic", "In The Summertime", "Oh Carolina", and "Angel". He has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards, winning twice for Best Reggae Album with Boombastic in 1996 and 44/876 with Sting in 2019, and has won the Brit Award for International Male Solo Artist in 2002.
Norman Washington Jackson, better known as Tiger, is a Jamaican dancehall musician active since the late 1970s. He is known for his growling style of deejaying, often imitated by other dancehall deejays since his initial rise to fame.
Rhythm Killers is an album by Jamaican musical duo Sly and Robbie, released in May 1987 by Island Records. By the time of the album's recording, Sly and Robbie had transitioned away from their prolific work in the reggae genre. They spent the 1980s experimenting with electronic sounds and contemporary recording technology on international, cross-genre endeavors, which influenced their direction for Rhythm Killers.
