Sister Nancy - One Two (Techniques/VPAL Music)

This is the album with Sister Nancy's best-known hit on it - the iconic Bam Bam, which can still be heard in reggae dances and playlists worldwide. I was grateful to have the opportunity to speak with her at length when writing the liner notes for this album, produced by Winston Riley and first released in 1982 on Techniques. Over the course of our hour-long conversation, Sister Nancy spoke of her upbringing, time spent learning her craft on Jamaican sound systems and hits shared with Yellowman as the early dancehall era got underway.

Below this photo of the album cover are extracts from the liner notes, which I'm hoping will encourage people to check out the vinyl reissue and other works by this now legendary deejay.

It’s Bam Bam – one of the greatest dancehall hits of all time – that would seal Sister Nancy’s reputation, despite it having been the last track she voiced for her album. She’d accompanied Yellowman to the studio when he recorded his own Bam Bam for Junjo. That’s when she got the inspiration to do a song using the same title and so she rang Winston Riley, who booked a session at Channel One and unleashed her on his classic cut of the Stalag riddim that very same day. 

“It was a little about things that I’d been through, and a little about where I come from. There’s a little of everything in it,” she told New York radio station Hot97, after admitting that she’d recorded it in such a hurry, there hadn’t been time to write out the lyrics until afterwards. Essentially, it was a freestyle and yet (together with Tenor Saw’s Ring The Alarm) it would dominate reggae dancehalls for generations to come. 

Incredibly, Bam Bam didn’t receive too much airplay in Jamaica itself and whilst Sister Nancy continued to record throughout the eighties and very early nineties, similar career-defining hits proved elusive. After a spate of songs for the likes of King Jammy, Bobby Digital and Shocking Vibes she ceased recording and then relocated to New York in 1996, where she studied for a degree in accountancy and worked in a bank for the next sixteen years. During all that time she hadn’t received any royalties for Bam Bam, despite its continuing popularity. She was finally compelled to take legal action in June 2014 after hearing it used in a TV commercial for Reebok Skyscape sneakers. Soon afterwards, she discovered that her signature recording had been credited to someone else she’d never heard of, unlike her other Techniques’ tracks, and that had been the case for over three decades.

“This song has been used. It’s been abused, but this song has never been refused. Everyone wants a piece of it,” she says. Finally, two years after successfully asserting her claims to her best-known hit, she was able to buy a house and devote all of her time to music. Today, she remains in demand for shows and occasional recording sessions worldwide and is free to enjoy the fruits of her labours at last. 

“Yes, and nobody is going to remove this woman now – trust me! Nobody! Because there still ain’t no stopping Nancy…”