Unlike
reggae dancehall stars of yesterday,
Xavier “Flexx” Davidson,
Craig “Craigy T” Thompson,
Alistaire “Alex” McCalla,
and Roshaun “Bay-C” Clarke
– the crew of 23 year-old Kingstonians
collectively known as T.O.K. - didn’t
need to hunt down the right Stateside-Jamdung
hybrid to take their music worldwide.
Raised on both MTV and Jamaica’s
sound system circuit, their blend
of beats and sensibilities comes naturally.
Check
the latest in several year’s
worth of T.O.K. hit singles, the long-legged
“Chi Chi Man,” a never-say-die
boomshot included on My Crew that
was released way back in 2000. Still
raising ’booyakas’ on
dancehall floors, the track’s
currently in rotation at mixed urban
radio stations from coast to coast.
Pure, unadulterated T.O.K., “Chi
Chi Man” is about hard beats
driving a hard subject – a slam
at corrupted individuals eating away
at society’s foundations like
termites (“chi chi” means
termite in Jamaican patois) –
and vocals that slide back and forth
between glorious, near operatic singing
and rough-riding deejaying [reggae
rapping] to rival any screw-faced
MC out of Jamaica’s pressure
cooker ghetto.
Opposition
leader Edward Seaga adopted the gem
of rhythm and song to boost his bid
for Prime Minister in the next national
election, but T.O.K.’s staying
out of it. “We’re not
at all politically affiliated,”
insists Craigy T. “We make our
music for all different types of people
from all different walks of life.
And T.O.K. is too big, too broad,
and too damn wicked for any head to
ignore it - hip hop, R&B, dancehall,
Babylonian or Rasta.
The
T.O.K. story started humbly enough,
9 years ago, with four ambitious high
school boys. Alistaire, Roshaun, and
Craig were in the school choir at
Campion College headed by John Binns,
while Xavier attended Calabar High.
Originally, the acronym T.O.K. stood
for Touch of Klass, but over the years
it has taken on different meanings
from ’Taking Over Kingston’
to ’To Klaat,’ and whatever
else the creative minds of T.O.K.
can come up with.
From
the beginning, life was about “T.O.K.
- school and music,” says Alex.
“Xavier and I loved singing
and were good friends. I went to school
with Craig and Roshaun, so we brought
them in. This was in the early 90’s,
during the whole emergence of Boyz
II Men, so we started out singing
their songs and sounding a whole lot
like them. But in growing together
as a unit, we developed the sound
you hear now. It’s about combining
the hardcore dancehall sound with
R&B harmonies and hip hop, thus
creating something brand new.”
“It’s
more like a evolution rather than
a change,” notes Craigy T. “We
wouldn’t be true to ourselves
if we did straight R&B, straight
covers of Boyz II Men, or tried to
write songs like them. We’re
Jamaican. That has to come out in
the music, and that’s what happened,
gradually. Music is music and it’s
one big umbrella under which all the
genres fall together. If you listen
hard enough, you hear all the similarities.”
Key
to the T.O.K. evolution were a radio
diet weighted equally between Stateside
and home-grown sounds, vocal training
from renown Jamaican coach Georgia
Guerra, and years of hard time put
in at high school party performances
and, a bit later, on Jamaica’s
famed North Coast hotel lounge circuit.
“It was all experience for us,”
says Xavier. “The cabaret circuit
is totally different, different audiences.”
“Actually, we weren’t
fully accepted in the hotel circuit,”
says Roshaun. “We weren’t
the norm. The other groups sang straight,
but we always tried to do something
different. We’d do a Bob Marley
song or an Ini Kamoze song like `Hot
Stepper.’ From ever sin
