Dubmatix Sticky Icky Reggae Mix

The story of Habibi Funk begins not in Cairo or Beirut but in Berlin, where a young record collector named Jannis Stürtz spent years haunting second-hand shops and chasing down obscure leads across North Africa and the Middle East. What he was piecing together was a sound the Arab world had largely forgotten, a body of music from the 1960s and 1970s that absorbed soul, funk, psychedelia, and Latin grooves, then filtered them through local sensibilities, languages, and heartbreak. Stürtz launched Habibi Funk Records in 2016 as a reissue label, but what he was really doing was making the case that this music deserved to be heard on its own terms, as something essential rather than merely curious.

The 1970s were the golden decade, and nowhere does that feel more alive than in Morocco and Libya. In Morocco, Fadoul was the genre’s unruly spirit, a singer who absorbed James Brown and pushed him somewhere rawer, more street-level, with records like Sid Redad built on a groove that barely holds together and is all the better for it. Attarazat Addahabia and vocalist Faradjallah occupied stranger territory, blending gnawa trance music with fuzzy electric guitars and a psychedelic looseness that places a track like Al Hadaoui somewhere between Marrakech and Woodstock.

Down in Libya, the picture was equally rich. The Scorpions, not the German rock band but a Sudanese-Libyan outfit led by guitarist Sharhabil Ahmed alongside vocalist Saif Abu Bakr, were making some of the most quietly sophisticated music of the era, tracks like Seira Music and Nile Waves carrying a cool, unhurried confidence that sounds almost effortless. Ibrahim Hesnawi and Ahmed Fakroun rounded out a Libyan scene that had genuine range, from Hesnawi’s deep, stately Watany Al Kabir to Fakroun’s more cosmopolitan Sahranin, a track that could sit comfortably alongside anything coming out of Lagos or Kingston in the same period.

 

What this playlist makes clear is that Habibi Funk was never really a genre in the narrow sense. It was a moment of possibility, spread across a dozen countries and twice as many musical traditions, held together by a shared appetite for rhythm, modernity, and something that felt genuinely alive. You hear Fadoul or Fakroun or Al Massrieen, and you understand immediately that nothing was lost in translation, that these artists took what they wanted from the wider world and made it entirely their own.

 

PLAYLIST

Dalton - Alech

Fadoul - Sid Redad

Attarazat Addahabia; Faradjallah - Al Hadaoui

Magdy Al Hussainy - Music de Carnaval

The Scorpions; Saif Abu Bakr - Seira Music

Sal Davis - Quaboos

Ait Meslayene - El Fen

Dalton - Alech

The Scorpions; Saif Abu Bakr - Nile Waves

Ibrahim Hesnawi - Watany Al Kabir

The Scorpios - Mashena: We Went

Charif Megarbane - Tayyara Warak

Ahmed Malek - La La La

The Free Music: Najib Alhoush - Arb Share’i

Al Massrieen - Sah

Ahmed Fakroun - Sahranin

London in the mid-seventies was not a comfortable place to be young. Unemployment was climbing, the National Front was gaining ground on the streets, and the music coming out of the mainstream had nothing to say about any of it. Punk arrived as a reaction, detonated largely by the Sex Pistols, but if the Pistols were the bomb, The Clash were the politics that followed. Joe Strummer, born John Graham Mellor, had been fronting a pub rock outfit called the 101ers when he saw the Sex Pistols play in the spring of 1976 and understood immediately that everything had to change. He quit within days and joined guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon, who had been playing together in a pre-punk group called London SS. Simonon came up with the name after noticing it appearing constantly in British newspaper headlines: race clashes, class clashes, political clashes. It fit perfectly. With drummer Terry Chimes completing the lineup, they played their first show on 4 July 1976, supporting the Sex Pistols in Sheffield, having rehearsed for less than a month.

The Clash signed to CBS Records in January 1977 for a reported £100,000 and immediately had to defend the deal against accusations of selling out. Their answer was their self-titled debut album, recorded in three weekends for roughly £4,000 and released in April 1977. It was raw, fast, and direct in a way the music press had rarely encountered: thirty-five minutes of songs about unemployment, police harassment, boredom, and the grinding weight of class. ‘Career Opportunities’, ‘White Riot’, and ‘Janie Jones’ announced a band writing from lived experience rather than spectacle. Critically, the album also included a cover of Junior Murvin’s reggae track ‘Police and Thieves’, signalling from the outset that The Clash were listening beyond punk, that their cultural reference points stretched into the Jamaican community in London, a community living under the same conditions of poverty and institutional racism that Strummer was putting into lyrics. CBS’s American division refused to release the album, deeming it too raw for US radio. In the UK it reached number twelve and announced the band as something serious and lasting.

Their second album, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, released in 1978 with American producer Sandy Pearlman at CBS’s insistence, had a bigger, more polished sound that sat uneasily with the band’s instincts. It sold well but felt constrained. What mattered more that year was where The Clash were placing themselves politically. They headlined the Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park in east London in April 1978, drawing a crowd of over 80,000 people at a time when far-right parties were actively recruiting in British cities. They had also recorded the furious single ‘Complete Control’ in 1977 with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry producing, a direct response to CBS releasing a track without the band’s approval, and a signal of how seriously they took the connection between Jamaican music and the political fire in their own work. The band insisted their records be priced accessibly, refused to charge inflated ticket prices, and were chronically in debt to their label as a result. For The Clash, the politics were never separate from the music. They were the same thing.

The impact The Clash left behind is difficult to overstate. Chuck D has credited them as the direct template for Public Enemy’s approach to socially conscious lyrics and their relationship with the press. Tom Morello, who inducted the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, built the entire philosophy of Rage Against the Machine on the question The Clash asked first: what happens when you put radical politics inside music with real rhythmic weight and make people want to move to it? Their influence runs through Massive Attack, U2, the Beastie Boys, and virtually every artist who has ever believed that bass and conviction belong in the same room. Joe Strummer died on 22 December 2002, one month before that Hall of Fame induction, at the age of fifty. The music has not stopped mattering since.

This mix pulls from the early years, the fury of the debut, the political fire of the singles, and the moment a band from west London decided that punk was only the beginning. Turn it up.

PLAYLIST

The Clash The Guns of Brixton - Remastered

The Clash Remote Control - Remastered

The Clash Know Your Rights - Remastered

The Clash Police & Thieves - Remastered

The Clash London Calling - Remastered

The Clash Straight to Hell - Remastered

The Clash Safe European Home - Remastered

The Clash White Riot - Remastered

The Clash Should I Stay or Should I Go - Remastered

The Clash Train in Vain (Stand by Me) - Remastered

The Clash London’s Burning - Remastered

The Clash Tommy Gun - Remastered

The Clash Police On My Back - Remastered

The Clash Drug-Stabbing Time - Remastered

The Clash Red Angel Dragnet - Remastered

The Clash Junco Partner - Remastered

The Clash Rock the Casbah - Remastered

The Clash Hateful - Remastered

Prince Rogers Nelson was born on 7th June 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, into a household already marked by music. His father, John L. Nelson, performed jazz under the name Prince Rogers, and his mother, Mattie Shaw, sang in a jazz band — so the boy named after his father’s stage name was, in a very real sense, born into the art form. Minneapolis in the late 1950s and 1960s was not a city typically associated with the birth of music legends, but its particular blend of Midwestern soul, Black community life, and a thriving local live scene would prove to be fertile ground. Prince began playing piano at age seven, taught himself guitar and drums as a teenager, and reportedly mastered over two dozen instruments before he was old enough to vote. By the time he was in his teens, he was already gigging with local bands — most notably 94 East, a funk and soul outfit led by Pepe Willie — demonstrating a musical maturity that seemed to have arrived fully formed

His path into the industry was unconventional and, in retrospect, an early signal of the kind of control he would demand throughout his career. After recording a demo at Moon Sound Studio in Minneapolis with engineer Chris Moon, Prince caught the attention of Owen Husney, a local manager who bankrolled professional demo sessions and pitched the teenage prodigy to major labels. The pitch was simple and audacious: here was a seventeen-year-old who could play every instrument on his own recordings, produce his own material, and write songs of genuine commercial and artistic depth. Warner Bros. signed him in 1977, giving him an unusually generous arrangement that granted him production autonomy; an almost unheard-of concession for an artist making their debut. He went into the studio alone. His debut album, For You, released in 1978, was recorded almost entirely by Prince himself, overdubbing every part in a painstaking solo effort. It was a commercial modest start, but it announced something unmistakable: a singular artistic intelligence operating at full capacity.

The albums that followed came quickly and escalated in ambition. His self-titled second record in 1979 produced his first significant hit with “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” a sleek piece of Minneapolis funk that reached the top five on the R&B charts and introduced him to a mainstream audience. Then came Dirty Mind in 1980, the album that genuinely established his creative identity; a low-budget, sexually direct, punk-inflected funk record that baffled categories and delighted critics. He was playing everything himself, working now from a home studio setup that would evolve into the legendary Paisley Park complex, building a sound that owed debts to James Brown, Sly Stone, Joni Mitchell, and Jimi Hendrix whilst sounding like none of them. Controversy followed in 1981, deepening the artistic and commercial momentum, before 1999 in 1982 broke him wide open — a double album of synthesiser-driven funk and new wave pop that yielded multiple hit singles and laid the foundation for everything that was about to follow.

The legacy of Prince’s early years is inseparable from his working methods and his insistence on creative ownership. By recording himself, producing himself, and refusing to cede control to outside collaborators or label interference, he established a template for artist autonomy that was radical in 1978 and remains influential today. His Minneapolis sound; a tightly wound fusion of funk, soul, rock, pop and electronic music, would go on to shape an entire generation of producers and artists, from Janet Jackson’s collaborations with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (both former members of his live band The Revolution) to the wave of bedroom producers who would follow his example of the self sufficient studio auteur. Before Purple Rain, before the world fully understood what it was dealing with, those first four albums documented a young artist figuring out not just who he was, but what music could be when one mind was allowed to pursue a vision without compromise. What he built in those years was not merely a discography; it was a philosophy, and its reverberations have never really stopped

PLAYLIST

Prince - Soft and Wet

Prince - Sexy Dancer

Prince - I'm Yours

Prince - I Wanna Be Your Lover

Prince - Controversy

Prince - Just as Long as We're Together

Prince - Uptown

Prince - Bambi

Prince - Let's Work

Prince - I Feel for You

Prince - Head

Prince - 1999 - 2019 Remaster

Prince - Raspberry Beret

Born Manley Augustus Buchanan on 19 April 1949 in Trenchtown, Kingston, Big Youth grew up in chaos and poverty, one of five children raised by a Christian preacher mother and a police officer father. Before music ever entered the picture, he was working as a diesel mechanic at Kingston’s Sheraton Hotel, where he developed his toasting skills on the job and got the nickname “Big Youth” from his co-workers. That detail alone tells you everything. This was not a man groomed for stardom. He built it from the ground up.

PLAYLIST

Big Youth - Cool Breeze

Big Youth -Some Like It Dread

Big Youth - Hit the Road Jack

Big Youth - House of Dreadlocks

Big Youth - Hotter Fire

Big Youth - Tribulation

Big Youth - Jim Screechy (Remastered)

Big Youth - S.90 Skank

Big Youth - Keep Your Dread (Remastered)

Big Youth - I Love the Way You Love (Remastered)

Big Youth - Water House Rock (Remastered)

Big Youth, U-Roy - Battle of the Giant (Remastered)

Big Youth - Get Up Stand Up

Big Youth - Screaming Target

Big Youth - Lightning Flash (Weak Heart Drop)

Big Youth - All Nation Bow (Remastered)

Big Youth - Wolf in Sheep Clothing Edit (Remastered)

Big Youth - London’s Burning

Big Youth; John Holt - 2011

Back in the early 90s, while attending college in London, Ontario, Canada, my buddy Aaron and I’d made the drive back and forth to Toronto on a regular basis, and it was on these numerous rides that we’d stack the pockets with our cassettes - road trip soundtracks, and one of our favourites was Two Seven’s Clash by Culture. Fire up the engine, insert the tape and kick off with See Them A Come, one of my all-time favourite cuts, and we’d be jacked up and ready to roll. During college, Aaron, I, and another buddy, Marcus, journeyed to Toronto to catch Culture at The Great Hall - to say this was a magical musical night would be doing it a disservice. We had balcony seats right above the stage, so we could catch everything up close. Seeing Hill with the backup singers, lock-step groove, sweet harmonies - it was an out-of-body experience, that could have been down to the little spliff that we’d partaken in beforehand, but whatever the reason, this concert, the countless hours of being on the road have left music of Culture indelibly marked in my musical consciousness. So today I shine the musical spotlight back to the early years of Culture in the mix

Culture: Roots Reggae’s Most Righteous Voice

Jamaica in the mid-70s was a pressure cooker. Political violence, poverty, and a deep spiritual hunger for something beyond the immediate reality of Kingston’s yards and tenements all found a voice in roots reggae, and few groups channelled that voice more purely than Culture. The group came together in 1976, initially calling themselves the African Disciples: Joseph Hill on lead vocals, his cousin Albert “Ralph” Walker, and Roy “Kenneth” Dayes on harmonies. Hill had already put in his time as a percussionist with the Soul Defenders, the house band at the legendary Studio One, and had been working the sound system circuit for years before stepping out front. He knew the machinery of Jamaican music from the inside. They rebranded as Culture, found their producers in Joe Gibbs and engineer Errol Thompson, and cut a run of singles that crackled with urgency, among them “Two Sevens Clash.” The song predicted apocalyptic consequences for 7 July 1977. When that date arrived, large numbers of Jamaicans reportedly stayed home. Shops closed. People waited. The record had crossed the line from music into prophecy.

Those singles became the backbone of their 1977 debut album, also titled Two Sevens Clash — dense with Rastafarian theology, political fury, and some of the tightest three-part harmonies in reggae. Rolling Stone would later name it one of the 50 all-time coolest records ever made, the only reggae album to make that list. Not a bad debut. After the Gibbs sessions, Culture moved to producer Sonia Pottinger’s High Note label, one of the very few labels run by women in Jamaican music at the time. She brought in the best session players available: Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar in the rhythm section, Ansel Collins on keys, Cedric Brooks on horns, and percussionist Sticky. The result was a run of records that still holds up: Harder Than the Rest (1978), Cumbolo (1979), and International Herb (1979). Three albums in roughly two years, each one focused and fully realised.

The UK connection proved crucial. Two Sevens Clash had been finding its way into the hands of British punk fans as much as reggae fans, largely through John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show, and it charted at number 60 on the UK Albums Chart in April 1978. Virgin Records signed the group to its Front Line imprint, giving Culture international distribution just as their output was peaking. At the time of the first Rolling Stone Record Guide, Culture was the only act in any genre whose entire catalogue received five-star reviews across the board. The original lineup dissolved in 1981, but reunited in 1986 and returned with two strong albums rather than coasting on reputation. The 1990s brought further records on Shanachie and Ras Records, often with Sly and Robbie back in the rhythm section.

Joseph Hill died in August 2006 while on tour in Europe, collapsing mid-performance. What happened next became part of the Culture story in its own right. His son Kenyatta stepped up and completed the remaining nineteen shows of the tour. Critics and fans were stunned. The voices were eerily similar, the conviction just as real. The phrase that circulated afterwards said it plainly: magic, not tragic. Kenyatta has led the group ever since, alongside original founding member Albert Walker. Fifty years on, Two Sevens Clash still sounds like a warning.

PLAYLIST

Culture - Iron Sharpening Iron - 2000 Digital Remaster

Culture - See Them A Come

Culture - The International Herb

Culture - Behold I Come

Culture - Two Sevens Clash

Culture - Them A Payaka

Culture - Stop The Fussing And Fighting - 2000 Digital Remaster

Culture - I'm Not Ashamed

Culture - Natty Never Get Weary - Remastered 2000

Culture - Addis Ababa

Culture - Baldhead Bridge

Culture - Zion Gate

Culture - Tell Me Where You Get It - 2000 Digital Remaster

Culture - Down In Jamaica - 2000 Digital Remaster

Culture - Love Shine Bright - 2000 Digital Remaster

Culture - The Shepherd - 2001 Digital Remaster