General Levy

Born Paul Levy in 1971 in Park Royal, London, England, the north Londoner operated under the name General Levy and stood virtually alone as the home-grown voice championing British ragga once the genre crashed the UK mainstream in 1993 behind Chaka Demus And Pliers, Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and fellow Jamaican acts. He cut his teeth on the Vigilante, Java and Robbo Ranx’s Tipatone sound systems before issuing his debut single, “New Cockatoo,” for Robbo’s Muzik Street imprint in 1988; the track’s raw youth and boundless energy marked him out immediately. Relocating south, he teamed with Fashion Records’ in-house engineer Gussie P for the joint album Double Trouble, sharing the spotlight with Jamaican superstar DJ Capleton and contrasting their respective approaches across Jamaican and UK styles. A steady stream of sound-system specials raised his profile further until “Original Length & Strength,” also on Fashion, brought widespread notice. Three further Fashion singles—“Heat,” “Breeze” and “The Wig”—cemented his reputation as Britain’s leading ragga DJ, his rapid-fire delivery shifting without pause between conscious culture and outright slackness. Onstage he became a whirlwind of flailing limbs and ceaseless, raucous rhymes. Hip-hop experiments for Justice Records widened his audience, while the late-1992 Fashion long-player The Wickeder General raced off shelves. Major labels soon circled amid the 1993 ragga surge; ffrr secured the deal, re-titled and repackaged the album as Wickedness Increase and added tracks that drove strong sales, including among reggae loyalists who already owned the original pressing.