Death of Daggering

Posted on 09. Sep, 2009 by admin in Arts and Culture, Music

By Setrige Crawford

So really, what’s good about Dancehall Reggae right now? According to Bri Sweetness, a reggae-lover and Brooklyn clubber…”hardly anything”.

She’s right. She’s also one of many females not feeling what she sees in dancehall parties. The genre is in a transitional stage where soca themes and melodies are borrowed to create a movement called Daggering. These songs are weak lyrically and strong sexually.

“No one is really saying anything really but ‘Dagger’. Daggering aka the demise of Dancehall Reggae to me, not only has made the music repetitive and corny but has done away with real dancing.”
-Bri Sweetness

Artists like Charley Blacks and Aidonia make these strongly-sexual suggestive songs that many girls lose their minds over. “Up in her Belly”, “Stop Ya Noise”, “Daggering” and many other popular dancehall songs are played religiously at dancehall parties, and is also known as the Crotches Morning segment. But what’s wrong with the Daggering vibe?

Daggering 101

Daggering is exactly what the word seems to mean. It is men violently jabbing women with their pelvises in a rough-sex motion. In other words, dry humping. But there are variations of this kind of behavior. Some men jump from tall speakers directly in between a woman’s legs and begin to thrust her violently. Some men throw women back and forth, cradling them and dry humping them. This is no-holds barred slackness to the fullest. Women are dragged all over dirty floors, with their clothes being ripped off. They dry hump men in wheel chairs and get pushed around in hand-carts to be catapulted onto a man’s pelvis.

“Dancing now is nothing more than jumping from ceilings, speaker boxes and anything that promotes gravity onto some worthless gal waiting below to get humped and brutally pumped. It’s a disgrace.”
-Bri Sweetness

Some of us miss the days where the melodies called for a nice slow wine; when a woman had to show her wire-waist skills to impress you. You hardly see any of that now. Anyone can dry-hump, but how many can really wine? It’s hard to tell in this era of daggering. Many dancehall-heads miss the days of the Stink Riddim and Sweat Riddim, when Elephant Man’s “Cock Up Yuh Bumper” called for all the champion bubblers to do their thing.

“What happened to girls actually whining and having technique? Those are the days I miss. The days when everyone actually danced. Now it is nothing more than fake ghetto acrobat activity. When daggering music comes on in the party, I know it is my cue to go, since watching people simulating what looks like rape is not really my style.”
-Bri Sweetness

It is annoying being in a hot reggae party and a girl jumps on you, expecting you to spin her around and dry-hump her across the dance floor. Who has the energy for all that? Some men do. Popular dancers like Marvin of the D&G dance crew, are responsible for catapulting this movement. He is one of the mainstays in the dancehall and most DJs call him out and encourage him to give women some “Daggering”. While it’s popular, it is dangerous. Many people have gotten hurt doing this.

Dutty Wining

Where did all of this start? Remember “Dutty Wine”, by Tony Matterhorn. That’s around the time that being a dutty girl in a party became popular. The song’s huge success masked the real message in the song. “Do dutty wine, my girl, dutty wine.” But who does dutty wining? Dutty girls. Not every girl. The dance spread across the internet via YouTube and before you know it, everyone was doing it. Daggering took Dutty Wine to the next level and now everyone expects this dutty behavior from dancehall women.

Think back to when that song first came out. The party could be calm and nice, but when Dutty Wine came on, every girl got wild. Jumping on their head tops, wining upside down. Letting men pick them up and jam them up on the wall. It really got crazy. Then came the song, “Sit Down Pon It” This took it further. Don’t wine up on it, sit down on it. Up and down, back and forth, dry movements. Where did the circular motions go? Where did the bubbling go?

“People in the dance would love to relax their trigga finger and unscrew their face to get a sweet wine from a gyal. Jay-Z made the song D.O.A. Death of Autotune. I think it’s time we launch a Death of Daggering campaign. It’s ran it’s course, now it’s time to get back to real dancehall. I say, Reggae artists, leave Soca to Soca. Stick to reggae.”
-Bri Sweetness

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