By Jonathan Anthony Burkett
Hip hop is usually told as a New York story, and it is. But if you follow the music back to its first parties, you keep running into Jamaica. The sound systems, the talking over records, the love of a heavy bass line: a lot of what made early hip hop feel new had already been tested on the streets of Kingston.
The sound system came first
In Jamaica, from the 1950s on, the sound system was the heart of a good night out. Crews built huge stacks of speakers, loaded them onto trucks and set up in yards and dance halls. Operators competed to have the loudest rig, the deepest bass and the most exclusive records.
That competitive spirit mattered. A sound system was not just a playlist. It was a team with a selector choosing the music, an engineer keeping the equipment alive, and a personality on the microphone hyping the crowd. Rivalries between sounds were fierce, and a crowd could crown a winner on any given night.
If that sounds a lot like early hip hop crews battling in parks and community centers, that is not a coincidence.
Toasting: talking over the riddim
Jamaican deejays developed a style called toasting, where they chatted, rhymed and shouted over instrumental versions of popular songs. Producers began pressing "version" sides, instrumentals on the back of a single, which gave deejays a clean rhythm to ride. Artists such as U-Roy turned toasting into hit records in their own right around the turn of the 1970s.
Put a rhyming voice over a looping groove and you have the basic shape of rapping. Toasting was not the only ancestor of the MC. African American traditions like the dozens, radio DJ patter, preaching and spoken-word poetry all fed in too. But the idea of a performer rocking a live crowd over someone else's record is something Jamaica had refined years earlier.
A Kingston-born DJ in the Bronx
The most famous link is DJ Kool Herc, born Clive Campbell in Kingston. He moved to the Bronx as a boy and brought his memories of Jamaican sound systems with him. In August 1973 he deejayed a back-to-school party in the recreation room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, an event many people now point to as the birthday of hip hop.
Herc noticed that dancers went wildest during the instrumental breaks of funk and soul records. So he used two copies of the same record to stretch those breaks out, switching between turntables to keep the drums going. That simple idea became the breakbeat, the foundation that b-boys and b-girls danced to and that MCs eventually rhymed over.
His powerful speaker setup, his crew and his habit of talking to the crowd all carried the stamp of Jamaican sound system culture. Hip hop did not copy Jamaica. It took a Jamaican approach and pointed it at American funk, soul and the realities of the Bronx.
Where you can still hear the island
Once you know the connection, you start hearing it everywhere. Here are a few places Jamaica keeps showing up in rap:
- Artists with Jamaican roots. The Notorious B.I.G. was the son of a Jamaican mother, Heavy D was born in Jamaica, and Busta Rhymes grew up with Jamaican parents. Each brought some of that heritage into their sound.
- Patois and toasting flows. Many rappers drop into Jamaican-style cadences or patois phrases, a nod to the deejays who came before them.
- Collaborations. Reggae and dancehall artists have featured on rap records for decades, and rappers regularly jump on dancehall riddims.
- Remix culture. Jamaica's habit of reworking one rhythm into many versions is a direct ancestor of the remix and the instrumental B-side.
- Bass. The chest-rattling low end that Jamaican sounds prized became one of hip hop's defining features.
Why the connection still matters
Knowing these roots changes how you listen. Hip hop was never only about one neighborhood or one community. It grew out of migration: families from the Caribbean, the American South and Latin America sharing the same blocks, swapping records and building something none of them could have made alone.
That history is also a reminder that culture travels with people. A kid who left Kingston carried a whole musical tradition in his head, and it helped spark a movement that now reaches every corner of the world. Your background, wherever it is, is not something to leave behind. It might be exactly what you have to offer.
The flow between Jamaica and American hip hop runs both ways, and it is still running. Jonathan Anthony Burkett is one example. He was born in Miami in 1987 and raised in Jamaica by his grandparents, and today he records inspirational hip hop and soul on his own label, Upstormed Records. His signature song, One Life, features reggae artist Ambelique, bringing those two worlds together on a single track.
Jonathan's earliest music memories come from that same kind of setup. For his sixth birthday in February 1993, his grandfather closed the crossroads at the top of their hill in Westmoreland to cars, set up speakers and hired a DJ. His grandfather didn't have much money, but word spread and people came “just to show their love.” Before that night, he had already learned to dance from dancehall tapes, and he spent the party trying to match the grown-ups' moves until his grandmother sent him to bed at 2 a.m.
Keep listening
The best way to understand these roots is to hear them side by side. Put on some early toasting records, then some classic old-school rap, and listen for the shared DNA: the voice riding the rhythm, the bass up front, the crowd at the center of it all. Then listen to how artists today mix the two.
If you want to hear how one artist raised in Jamaica carries that blend forward, explore Jonathan's releases on the Music page or follow him on Spotify.
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