TUGGAWAR-DOWNLOAD [email protected],R.I.P PAPAWAR

DONE THE WHOLE FRIGGING ARGUMENT!!!! FI - DAYZ "ANYTING MI SAY A LAW" TUGGY TUGGY!
Tuggawar’s latest album, Any Ting Mi Say a Law, is not for the faint-hearted.
Fi Dayz, his 2007 debut, sold over 65,000 and helped Tuggy establish a sizeable international fanbase.
The highly-anticipated follow up is released on his own Tug Movement label and finds the London-based reggae star collaborating with a wide variety of acts such as chart-topper Lil Wayne, jungle MC Shabba D and rising star Freedom.
Perhaps Best of Both Worlds would have been a more appropriate title as productions come from some of the hottest beat-makers in hip-hop (Dr Dre, Just Blaze, Mobb Deep) and reggae (Stephen ‘Di Genius’ McGregor, Donovan ‘Don Corleon’ Bennett).
If it’s classics rhythms and rudeboy gangsta lyrics you’re after; this impressive collection of 22 hardcore cuts is for you.
Tuggawar may be one of Britain’s most controversial rappers, but Any Ting Mi Say a Law is sure to win over old critics and attract new fans.
Orantes Moore 2009
Tuggawar is a young, dancehall artist from hackney london,whose story is so compelling, it would even get a Hollywood scriptwriter’s pulse racing.
The first to remember is that he’s no novelty act, but a deejay with serious skills. You can hear as much on his debut album Fi Dayz,Co-produced by Danny Ray for Jet Star, although Tuggawar and confederates like Freedom – who does brilliant impersonations, by the way – produce several of the tracks themselves, with most of the recordings having taken place at Tuggawar’s own studio in north London.
Fi - Dayz album,co-produced by Danny Ray Who is reponsible for some great productions on the album like Tugg loving,request to di famer,give thanks and praise and more not unnaturally, reflects the environment he inhabits, since it’s a mix of reggae, dancehall, grime, r&b, and even a little pop, if that’s what you want to call his version of The Offspring’s Pretty Fly For A White Guy. Tracks like Hey Baby, Love Is Better, Try Me (featuring Sara Jane), More The Merrier, and Tug Loving might certainly interest dance or mainstream DJs, but it’s the more Jamaican influences that define him best, and that provide the album’s main thrust.
Take Tug-Ga-War for instance, with its dubplate intro, military drum patterns, and uncompromising battle lyrics, as we’re warned that he’s “lyrically dangerous, “ and that on no account are we to “approach him for autographs.” I’m Not Joking, Grade, The Surf, and Jiggy Tuggy are straight-up dancehall tunes, but it’s London Anthem that’s been causing most commotion as he pays tribute to the youths of England’s capital city on a cut of Dave Kelly’s Eighty-Five rhythm. It’s the London equivalent of Baby Cham’s Ghetto Story, and the surest indication yet that this son of Greek and Irish parents is keeping it real, no matter the acclaim he’s already received in Jamaica itself.
“We had our own local sound when I was young,” he explains, “but I was always listening to tapes of Unity and then Saxon with Papa Levi, Smiley Culture, and Tippa Irie. From Jamaica, I used to listen to Super Cat, Ninjaman, and Johnny Ringo. I always wanted to be a deejay, and I started writing from very early. I do other music now, but I was into reggae more than anything else and still am, because reggae’s the foundation of musics like grime, drum & bass, and hip hop. All of them revolve around reggae, and they couldn’t exist without it, but those early dancehall pioneers had a massive impact on me. I think the standard of deejaying was higher back then, than what it is now. They took the trouble to write proper lyrics, and that showed in their records and what they were doing on sound-system, y’know?”
Just as any serious newcomer should, Tuggawar took time out to learn the art of deejaying properly, and he was therefore already well practised before his grand adventure really began, and he took his first trip to Jamaica. ”In 2001 I went down to Jamaica for two weeks, and ended up staying for a few years,” he says, laughing at the memory. “That was more by accident than design. I didn’t know anybody. I just went down there with my girlfriend, met some of her family and that was it. We arrived in Kingston, but stayed in Spanish Town, and it was real hardcore.
“Basically, I got jailed for weed out there, and was locked up with Jah Cure and Zebra in Spanish Town prison. I was on the same block as them, and they had a concert in the prison one Easter Monday. That was the first time I ever performed in Jamaica, and there were two thousand prisoners at that show! Jah Cure called me up on stage, I wrecked the place, and then Sean’s father told me I reminded him of his son, because he was in there as well. He was getting released two weeks before me, and said he’d arrange for me to stay in Jamaica, because they were going to deport me otherwise. He was willing to support me, so he contacted Roy Francis, who took care of the immigration people.
Roy then produced my first tune, Hot Gal, on Sly & Robbie’s Macca rhythm. It was after that I began hanging round Mixing Lab, and all these other artists would pass through. Lexxus, he was there one day, and asked me to voice on this rhythm he had. I said yes straightaway, and from that day onwards, we started rolling together. He brought me on stage at a lot of shows, and introduced me to a lot of producers. That’s how I ended up doing so many recordings, because whenever one of these producers wanted to voice Lexxus, he’d say to record me first.
I didn’t get any strong tunes from my time in Jamaica, but I did make quite a name for myself as a performer, and that’s how Laing came to book me on Sting and a good many other shows down there, including Vybz Kartel’s birthday bash.
“To give you an idea of how much work I was doing, I got released from prison in May 2002, and by September I was booked to perform at Sting for the first time. Then just before I left, I met up with Steely & Clevie, who offered me a recording contract, except due to some family problems here in England, I never got to sign it. After that, I began to build my own Pro-Tools studio, and apart from doing shows and recordings, I did a lot of networking as well, which is what got me noticed by Jet Star.”
His profile’s continued to rocket in the meantime, mainly thanks to MySpace and support slots on recent UK tours by Beenie Man and Busy Signal. After that debut in Spanish Town Prison, no audience on earth can worry him, and that spell behind bars inspired a good few lyrics as well, like Give Thanks And Praise for example.
“Yes, that one had to be on there, and Hold Di Faith is a nice tune as well. We’re saying how the politicians only care about money, but we’re not going overboard with all that, y’know? We’re just pointing out how things are, and that’s why we’re saying to hold the faith, no matter what you may be going through. It’s a song designed to help people be strong, and to do the right and not the wrong, basically.”
Does it require a different approach, chatting on conventional rhythms? “Well yes, but I grew up listening to Saxon and Unity, so it’s nice to include some original, one-drop, rub-a-dub style rhythms. Request To The Farmer is another like that, and was one of my biggest tunes when I was in Jamaica, because I was doing it round about the time of their election, in 2002. I remember hearing Seaga [Edward Seaga, the Opposition Leader, who’s of Lebanese extraction] declare that, ‘me nah born yah, but me for yah.’ I was listening to it on the radio with Gadaffi the producer, and said, ‘I can write a tune from that!’ Those were the lyrics that got me booked for Sting, because I’d go on stage and say, ‘me nah born yah, but me on yah, request to the farmer, who grow the yam and the banana. Down inna the west, me get my high-grade marijuana,’ and the crowds would go crazy. That was a massive tune for me down there.”
It’s a far cry from pleasing crowds in rural Jamaica, to performing songs like Pretty Fly For A White Guy, which benefited from Valerie Skeete’s input at Jet Star. “Well, I’ve always seen myself as a hardcore deejay, but I like doing more melodic things too, like Hey Baby and Pretty Fly For A White Guy. I want people to buy my album for different tracks, and I’m just showing my versatility on all types of rhythms, and sometimes taking a different kind of approach, rather than chanting on it, or deejaying. It’s like a sing-jay sort of style, and it’s a style I like, so if I feel that vibe from certain rhythms, I’ll keep doing stuff like that. No one’s really heard Tuggawar like that before. It’s different, y’know?”
His willingness to experiment goes hand-in-hand with owning his own studio, and it’s his long-term ambition to produce other, up-and-coming acts once his career’s better established. More than a third of the tracks from his album are self-produced, including Tug-Ga-War and Fi Dayz, which is a tribute to Tiger of sorts, since Tuggawar himself borrows the melody from When, and then Freedom mimics the deejay himself on the intro.
“Yeah, that’s right. Freedom and I both produced that tune, and then there’s a track called Grade, which is on the Steely & Clevie rhythm, Giggy. We licked that over, so that’s our production as well, and so is The Surf, although the music’s from Jamaica. That’s a catchy tune, and then London Anthem is produced by us as well, and that’s my girlfriend Coco B who sings the chorus.”
Does she also sing on Love Is Better? ”Yes, that’s correct, but we’ve done a lot of combinations together. She’s not really a reggae singer, but she’s very versatile. She can sing anything, y’know? Because she’s just sang over the Simply Red tune Stars, which you should be hearing soon. She’s more into r&b, but she raps as well, so I’m going to get her rapping on my next album.”
In the meantime, he’s shooting a video for Tug Loving, which is produced by Danny Ray Music done by Computer Paul, and we’re also videos for More The Merrier and Fi-Dayz. “The one for London Anthem’s on the television already, and that’s real hardcore,” he says proudly, “but at the same time, I’m always looking to send a positive message out there. That’s the main thing, I think, to put out some conscious vibes to the youths them. We can do the hardcore thing, but it’s all about the positive vibes as well, and from I’ve got the studio, anything can happen…”John Masouri 2007_______________________________________________________