Cocoa Tea

Among the pioneers of dancehall music, Cocoa Tea stood out for maintaining a steady and fruitful trajectory while the genre transformed across successive eras. His relaxed, mellow vocal approach suited tender and melodic lovers rock with ease, allowing him to develop a clear profile separate from his more forceful contemporaries. At the same time, he could sharpen his tone for culturally focused protest recordings that often displayed incisive observation. Born Calvin Scott on September 3, 1959, in Rocky Point, a modest settlement within Jamaica’s Clarendon parish, he participated in church and school choirs during his youth. At age fourteen he cut his debut tracks for producer Willie Francis in 1974, issuing the single “Searching in the Hills” under his birth name, though it failed to register. He subsequently spent several years as a racehorse jockey and later as a fisherman; while pursuing the latter trade he rekindled his interest in music by appearing with traveling sound systems at local dancehalls.

In 1983 he relocated to Kingston and took the stage name Cocoa Tea, derived from the Jamaican expression for hot chocolate, with later variants such as Coco Tea and Coco T occasionally appearing. There he encountered leading dancehall producer Henry “Junjo” Lawes and laid down a string of successful singles that encompassed “Rocking Dolly,” “I Lost My Sonia,” “Informer,” and “Can’t Stop Cocoa Tea.” His debut album, Weh Dem a Go Do...Can’t Stop Coco Tea, appeared in 1985 and gathered many of those earlier recordings; a modestly revised edition titled Rocking Dolly was subsequently released in the United States. After Lawes shifted his base to New York, King Jammy assumed primary production duties just as Tea began directing greater attention toward Rastafarian subjects. The partnership yielded the 1986 album The Marshall and the 1987 album Come Again, together with the title tracks from each plus “Tune In” and “Settle Down” among other successes.

During 1989 Tea joined Shabba Ranks and Home T in a supergroup project overseen jointly by King Jammy and Gussie Clarke. Their album Holding On achieved widespread popularity in Jamaica, as did the singles “Pirates Anthem” and “Who She Love.” Continuing his solo work with notable impact, Tea scored his largest socially conscious success to that point with the 1991 single “Riker’s Island” and an album of the same name. His pointed Gulf War critiques “Oil Ting” and “No Blood for Oil” were barred from radio airplay in both Jamaica and the United Kingdom, while the latter track appeared on the follow-up supergroup album Another One for the Road, which featured Cutty Ranks in place of Shabba. Tea’s next prominent solo release was the lovers rock number “Good Life,” helmed by producer Philip “Fatis” Burrell. He sustained consistent visibility through the late 1990s via further Burrell productions such as 1996’s “Israel King” and the 1997 King Sporty cover “I’m Not a King,” alongside 1995’s “Holy Mount Zion” for Bobby “Digital” Dixon and a 1997 collaboration with Cutty Ranks on the Bob Marley cover “Waiting in Vain.” A substantial portion of his mid-decade output was assembled on the 1997 album Holy Mount Zion, issued by the historic Motown label. Subsequent releases included 1998’s One Way and 2001’s Feel the Power.