Yellowman

Emerging as Jamaica's pioneering dancehall figure, Yellowman launched a fresh chapter in reggae after Bob Marley's passing. Achievements in the early 1980s raised toasting—the reggae parallel to rapping—to unprecedented heights while solidifying dancehall as the dominant force ahead. For better or worse, he also embodied dancehall's taste for slack lyrics, encompassing casual violence, sexism, homophobia, and general rudeness. His specialty, graphic sexuality, attained degrees of explicitness never before heard in Jamaica. The approach earned him plenty of critics yet fueled much of his initial appeal. Beyond those elements, Yellowman ranked among the era's most agile toasters, boasting a relaxed, fluid delivery, skill at improvisation, and sharp wit in his wordplay. Moreover, all the claims of prowess on the microphone or in the bedroom required exaggeration to ring true: true to his stage name, Yellowman is an albino, a condition carrying immense social stigma in Jamaica. His ascent to fame was improbable enough, yet his shift from despised outcast to sex symbol proved even more remarkable—and might never have occurred without his signature lewdness. Startling as it often proved, the material affirmed him as a sexual being on equal footing with his listeners and arrived with sufficient humor to signal that he refused to treat himself with undue gravity. Encounters with cancer steered him toward more reflective, socially aware material in the 1990s, though his original approach proved most influential, opening doors for numerous dancehall toasters who followed. He stayed largely silent through most of the 2000s before staging a return via 2019's No More War.

Yellowman entered the world as Winston Foster in Negril, Jamaica, in 1959 (some accounts list 1956). Targeted early for mistreatment owing to his albinism, he spent his upbringing inside a Kingston institution, sustained chiefly by music. Shaped by pioneering toasting DJs such as U-Roy, he honed his rhyming and secured work with the Gemini Sound System as a fill-in DJ. Naming himself Yellowman and appearing in a vivid yellow suit, he laced his lyrics with jokes about his skin tone alongside extravagant stories of sexual exploits. In 1979 he claimed a decisive win at the celebrated Tastee Talent Contest, and within months he had risen to one of Jamaica's leading live attractions through a lively, comedic stage presentation that frequently saw him employing the microphone to imitate his physical attributes.

Yellowman recorded at a furious pace in the early 1980s, at times saturating the Jamaican marketplace with over 40 singles. His debut long-player, Them a Mad Over Me, captured for Channel One in 1981, included the successful title track and the single "Me Kill Barnie," a response record to Lone Ranger's hit "Barnabas Collins." He further registered successes with singles such as "Operation Eradication" and the notorious slack track "Shorties," which Peter Tosh denounced as insulting to women—the first of many such rebukes he would receive. Despite these accomplishments, Yellowman did not truly find his footing on record until linking with innovative dancehall producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes. The 1982 album Mister Yellowman began their partnership; issued worldwide by Greensleeves, it helped introduce him to audiences in the U.K. and U.S. and continues to be praised as his finest work. It also sparked a run of Jamaican hit singles across the following years that encompassed "Yellowman Getting Married" (a reworking of the My Fair Lady number "I'm Getting Married in the Morning"), "Mr. Chin," "Who Can Make the Dance Ram" (a reworking of "The Candy Man"), "Zungguzungguguzungguzeng" (later sampled by several hip-hop acts), "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," "Soldier Take Over," "Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt," and "Wreck a Pum Pum," among others. Numerous recordings from this period incorporated vocal contributions from fellow DJ and toaster Fathead, whose hallmark involved punctuating lines with animal sounds ("ribbit" and "oink" counted among his preferred choices).

Following the 1983 release Zungguzungguguzungguzeng, Yellowman secured a major-label agreement with CBS Records that urged him to preserve the stylistic range of his earlier output. Nevertheless, his sole album for the imprint, 1984's King Yellowman, yielded uneven outcomes, mixing slack toasts with R&B and pop-inflected crossover material that featured renditions of "Sea Cruise" and "Take Me Home Country Roads" together with the widely criticized fusion experiment "Disco Reggae." He went on to issue several albums via Shanachie, among them 1984's Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt, 1985's Galong Galong Galong, 1986's Going to the Chapel, and 1987's Don't Burn It Down. The last of these ventured further into social awareness; the title track served as a pro-marijuana statement, while "Stop Beat Woman" denounced domestic violence and "Free Africa" assailed apartheid. Around this period he faced a cancer diagnosis that necessitated removal of part of his jaw, resulting in facial disfigurement. Ever resilient, he nevertheless resumed activity with the successful Fats Domino cover "Blueberry Hill" and moved to the Ras label to cut the well-regarded Yellow Like Cheese album alongside producer Philip "Fatis" Burrell.

Yellowman's recording output proceeded steadily, with his sexual boasts and gay jokes growing increasingly explicit and biting. Popularity had declined after 1985, partly because of uneven material and partly because of the arrival of many new dancehall artists who drew directly from his early work for inspiration. Circumstances shifted, however, after another early-1990s skin-cancer diagnosis. Deeply affected by this second life-threatening illness, Yellowman thoroughly reconsidered his musical direction and thereafter focused almost entirely on spiritual and social themes. 1994's Prayer album (still on Ras) marked the first project in this new phase and was followed soon after by Message to the World in 1995. 1997's Freedom of Speech maintained a comparable direction, after which Yellowman transferred to the Artists Only label. His initial effort there, 1999's Yellow Fever, emphasized conscious reggae yet also incorporated lighthearted party tracks. After the 2003 release New York, Yellowman entered an extended recording break even as he maintained a schedule of live performances.

In 2019, sixteen years after his previous album, he reemerged with No More War. The LP served as the first release on Yellow Baby Records, a label founded by Yellowman's daughter K'reema, with whom he also collaborates.