Top Listeners
Description
A precursor to American rap and hip-hop, Dancehall's roots are in the Jamaican nightclubs of the 1970s. The genre got its start when DJs started talking or "toasting" over prerecorded tracks that they would manipulate by adjusting the sound system's playback controls. Early rap was an Americanized version of toasting, which itself was a descendent of an African-American tradition of playfully trading insults called "the dozens."