NOTCH

Also blazing on the acid jazz-fusion group Thievery Corp. tour is Norman Howell, aka Notch, former lead vocalist of the Hip-Hop Reggae group Born Jamericans. Notch is no newcomer to the music industry, but after Born Jamericans made the decision to part ways, Notch put his music career on hold to pursue a degree in Engineering. Now a renewed Notch has adapted an unreserved approach with a new vibe which will be noticed in his new soon to be release reggae flavored solo album ‘The School of Yard knocks’ and in the follow up album which will take on a more Spanglish flavored direction. When asked recently by West Indian Times if he has any new music out, Notch replied "yeah, but people just don’t realize it’s me" and then he added with comedic wit "I’m in the artist relocation witness protection program!" Notch has underground works such as the reggae solo title track ‘Nuthin Nuh Go So’ on the Buy Out Riddim, ‘Party Yardy’ on the Flip Riddim, as well as Spanglish fuse dancehall reggae songs such as ‘Hay Que Bueno’ on the ‘OutLaw’ Riddim. These tracks can be heard throughout the entire underground reggae scene in the Caribbean, USA, Hawaii to as far as Belgium and Central America. - http://www.westindiantimes.net/Entertainment.htm

As a new style centered on dance and club culture, reggaeton has absorbed much of contemporary electronic music into its vocabulary. The result is a fascinatingly diverse array of music that speaks to the universal appeal of music often thought of as the product of a hermetic island culture. This is music that thumbs its nose at geography. This is different. And therefore special.
What follows is a highly abbreviated list of some of my favorite reggaeton tracks I've culled from the Internet. I encourage readers to explore their own local reggaeton scenes: wherever young Latinos exist (which is practically everywhere in the U.S.), so does reggaeton.
Notch - Hay Que Bueno Reggaeton
There's nice interplay between the old and the new here: a stomping matador guitar, trumpet, congas and dramatic Spanish-pop crooning flavors the traditional reggaeton beat. Notch adds an authentic Latin melodicism to a rapping style that owes far more to Jamaica than NYC.
- http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1326

Hip-hop and classic reggae have never sounded better together than on "Warrior," a track that sees Red1, Fit and honey-voiced Born Jamerican singer Notch riding a sample of Jimmy Cliff's 1982 classic, "Peace Officer." - http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_07.25.02/thebeat/sample.html

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/breakenter/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003605879


Profiles of artists breaking at radio and/or retail and entering Billboard charts.
Notch


June 29, 2007,
Ayala Ben-Yehuda, L.A.
If anyone knows what reggae has to do with reggaeton, it's probably Notch. On his debut album, "Raised by the People," the son of a Jamaican-Cuban father and a black and Puerto Rican mother presents something like a photo gallery of his musical roots: dancehall, reggaeton, roots reggae, salsa and R&B, delivered back and forth in Spanish, English and patois.

Norman Howell spent his childhood in the inner city of Hartford, Conn. absorbing the music played by his father, a bass player in a local reggae band that backed touring acts like Toots & the Maytals and Horace Andy. (The Latin music came during "music appreciation time" with his mother's relatives, who would drink and dance while babysitting him).

Notch initially followed his father's footsteps as part of reggae-R&B duo Born Jamericans on the Delicious Vinyl label. But after the act split up in 1998, Notch's father encouraged him to explore his other musical side.
"He said 'Listen, you've got a lot of different backgrounds to you,'" recalls Notch. By delving into Latin sounds, said his father, "'you might find a lot of musical answers.'"


Notch got a major hint after he got his hands on a mixtape by Doo Wop and Latin DJ Tony Touch, which combined raps in Spanish and English. He started fusing his dancehall with Spanish lyrics, and when his label didn't get it, he took a trip down to Puerto Rico where a producer introduced to him by a friend suggested he speed up the beat.



By 2002, New York's Hot 97 had picked up "Hay Que Bueno," a dancehall track he'd recorded with Spanish lyrics. A reggaeton remix by DJ Blass hit first on radio in Puerto Rico and gradually found its way to clubs on the mainland, just as reggaeton was finding its commercial boom.

"I was doing R&B bilingual and mixing patois in English over hip-hop and Latin-infused music," says Notch. "I was never doing reggaeton... I didn't look at it like, this reggaeton is going to blow me up. I was happy that now the Latin community could be interested in more of what I had to offer."

Notch sang on a slew of tracks by fusionists like the Brand New Heavies, Sublime and Thievery Corporation, as well as reggaeton heavyweights Daddy Yankee and Voltio.

He finds connections between Jamaican poco drums and the Latin tropical timbal; he notes that salsa radio from Cuba bleeds onto Jamaican airwaves. "The upper echelon of Jamaica, their downtime is going to salsa nights," he notes.

After talking to several labels, who were looking for a "token reggaeton artist," he signed a joint venture between his imprint, Cinco por Cinco, and Machete Music. "They allowed me to do my trilingual thing and switch it up," says Notch. "They weren't trying to use me as the reggaeton guy."

His album "Raised by the People" debuted at No. 12 on Billboard's Latin Rhythm Albums Chart on the strength of bilingual reggaeton single "Dale Pa' Tra (Back It Up)." Another album highlight is roots reggae track "No Problema," also sung in Spanish and English.

Even if not everyone gets the fusions, "I'm gonna keep on doing catchy melodies," says Notch with pride. "Everything is in me."


- Billboard

http://www.notchonline.com/press/newtimesPress.pdf


Original Born Jamerican Notch--Extended Interview
Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 07:35:37 PM

On his debut solo album, Raised by the People, Notch is a sonero. A songsmith. He’s confident, even boisterous. But the person sitting across from me during a recent lunch interview is humble. He might attribute his humility to his nomadic journey in music; from his days in the reggae duo Born Jamericans, to his later dancehall days to his latest venture: reggaeton. But, after only a few questions it becomes apparent that it’s not the journey, but the reason for that journey that has made him this way. His cultural identity is a jigsaw puzzle. From an early age he understood that he wasn’t just American. He’s Jamaican. He’s Puerto Rican. He’s Cuban. And his music symbolizes that identity. He’s been categorized as a reggaeton artist for Raised by the People, but he’s quick to reject the label. As well he should. Raised by the People flows from reggaeton to merengue to freestyle to R&B to reggae without the slightest friction. In “Ay Qué Bueno!,” “Dale Pá Trá” and “Guaya Guaya” he’s all reggaeton. “Qué te Pica” is a merengue reminiscent of Sandy & Papo – if not more danceable. Then there’s “Jah Mexi Cali,” a purist reggae beat as catchy as its lyrics are melancholic. To add to the album’s mercurial nature, he sings in what he calls Spatoinglish, a mixture of Spanish, Jamaican patois and English. While in Miami, Notch sat down with New Times to talk about his journey.

New Times: You’re part Jamaican, part Cuban, part Puerto Rican and your MySpace page says your mother is part Portuguese.
Notch: And part American Indian. It’s a colorful family tree.
Are you trying to find an identity in reggaeton?
Uh, not really. I think reggaeton is trying to find an identity in me. … I don’t speak the same subject matters that a lot of the Puerto Rican reggaeton artists do because I wasn’t born and raised in Puerto Rico. I’m not from the same pool of artists there that have had the same experiences.
Tell us about Spatoinglish.
It’s how you have Spanglish. The first generation Latinos move to America. … Patois, in Jamaica, is nothing more than the Queen’s English, mixed with the African dialect that was brought over. But broken, it’s a broken dialect of English but it has a lot of African influence in it. But it’s still English, it’s not too far off. If I was speaking Japanese or Portuguese and patois and Spanish, I’d be a lot more amazed at myself.
How hard was it to transition from the patois reggae to the Spanish reggaeton?
It was difficult trying to convince the label that I used to be a part of to transition from the Jamerican reggae/dancehall/hip hop to going to straight Latin fuse music. And I got kind of a fight. I got discouraged. It was like, “Yo, we’re not accepting these songs. We’re gonna drop you if you keep singing this Latin stuff.”
How long ago was this?
This was from ’98 to 2001. So I’ve been hammering away at this Latin direction long before the explosion. I didn’t really get a chance to ride the wave of reggaeton ‘cause I was doing it at a time when they weren’t rocking it. I’ve been fighting. A lot of people don’t know that. They think it’s easy for me to slide into it ‘cause I look Spanish. I sound Spanish on record. And the Spanish thing is what’s happening right now, so why not slide in and make a quick buck?
What do you say to these people who will think that is what you’re doing?
Check my discography.
How fluent are you in Spanish?
I always tell everybody I just know Newyorican. I know all the abuelita sayings. I understand it more than I speak it. When I speak it to a female, and there’s no other English speaking person around, she’ll be like, “Your Spanish is not bad at all.”
Is reggaeton a fad?
They said hip-hop was a fad. They said rock ‘n’ roll was a fad. Any new music that comes along that represents change, or the industry has to readjust to find a way to capitalize off it, there are always naysayers who feel threatened by it because they’re not a part of it yet and they don’t know a way to work it out so then it’s a fad. I think if reggaeton loses musical value, if not too many artists step up to the plate with catchy, transcendent melodies, that transcend the language, that transcend the culture barrier, and other people of other countries or nationalities don’t embrace it, it will stay permanent only amongst Latins, but will lose out on mainstream exposure.
When did the album come out?
It came out May 22. It came out very humbly without much prior promotion, without much prior buzz. With just a window where not much albums were coming out. “We waited long enough for you to deliver this album. We got a window, nobody’s gonna release that week. Even though the streets is not whet with all this promotion, lets get the first run in stores and lets start the process of trying to figure out how to make this album make sense to the public.” –Bryan Falla
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/crossfade/2007/06/original_born_jamerican_notche.php

- NEW TIMES- Broward-Palm Beach.

July 9, 2007
Jordan Levin -- The Miami Herald
Notch's solo debut CD, "Raised by the People," is an uncategorizeable blend.
Jamaican-American-Latino singer Notch's background is so mixed that the only way he could make sense of it was musically.

His paternal grandfather was born and raised in Cuba, the son of Jamaican immigrants. They subsequently went back to Jamaica, where Notch's father was born before the family came to the United States. Notch's African-American mother spoke Spanish, thanks to a Puerto Rican stepfather and step-siblings. "It's one big migration origin," he says.

Notch grew up in Hartford, Conn., speaking English, Spanish, Jamaican patois and African-American slang. "I call it cacophonics," he says with a grin, also talking about how he listened to a matching cacophony of music -- reggae, ska, R&B, hip-hop, salsa, merengue.

Except Notch was always hearing the musical links instead of the differences: The R&B sounds in Jamaican lover's rock; the salsa bass lines in classic reggae; the African roots in all of it.

"I don't forget that at one point all these people who are living in the places where the beats came from are from one place," he says, sitting at a Lincoln Road restaurant one recent morning.

"Just because Europe came and moved the people and language around doesn't mean that everything was gonna change. Culture and music-wise, there are going to be interwoven links. That's why fusion works."

Notch is color blind, and says he hears the same way.

"I don't see the differences between colors," he says. "It's the same way with music -- it all sounds the same to me. I see the beauty in all these different musics."

And he brings it all together on his solo debut CD, Raised by the People, an uncategorizeable blend of reggaeton, reggae, hip-hop, merengue and more.

"The uniqueness of this album is it's reflecting the current state of the American melting pot," says Notch. 'Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans -- we all live side-by-side instead of being divided by water. And we all hear each other's music constantly. We're trying to say, 'How can I enjoy this, even though it's not mine?'"
Notch -- real name Norman Howell -- has been enjoying different styles his whole career.

He was the sweet-voiced singer for the duo Born Jamericans, who had success in the mid-'90s blending reggae with R&B and hip-hop. He sang with jazz-fusion-electronica groups Thievery Corporation and Brand New Heavies, with reggaeton superstar Daddy Yankee and with Colombian vallenato group Cyclon.

In 2004 he had a reggaeton hit with "Oye Que Bueno." Almost no one realized that the voice behind the Puerto Rican hit was a Jamaican-American-plus guy from New England.

In a way, Notch's genre-hopping versatility was more of a liability than an advantage in an industry built on categorizing music into marketable styles. But Machete Music, a division of Universal Latino specializing in reggaeton and Latin hip-hop, sees Notch as a potential bridge between their audience of bicultural U.S. Latino kids to their non-Latino counterparts.

"I would like for Notch to be the type of artist U.S. Latino kids can be proud of and introduce to their non-Spanish speaking counterparts," says Machete president Gustavo Lopez.

Machete is releasing the CD in partnership with the determinedly independent singer's own Cinco por Cinco Records. "He doesn't want anyone to tell him what to do," Lopez says. "Notch speaks for himself."

And he hears for himself -- often connections that only music scholars hear. Early on, Notch noticed similarities between the reggae and other Jamaican music he heard at home, and the American R&B and hip-hop around him. He discovered that Jamaican music in the 1950s and '60s often emulated and reworked Motown and soul.

With Born Jamericans, Notch and rapper-partner Edley Shine tried to update the mix. "Jamericans was the first attempt to show the fusion and similarities between two sets of music that we weren't really aware were borrowing elements from each other," Notch says.

He also discovered Latin musical influences that predate the reggae-Puerto Rican fusion of reggaeton by decades. "There's always been an interest in some level of Latinness [in Jamaica], long before reggaeton," Notch says.

That mix of Latin and U.S. influences stretches across some 60 years and multiple countries, says Jamaican music scholar and freelance writer Garnette Cadogan. Jamaican migration to and from Cuba, Panama, and starting in the 1960s, the United States, brought new styles of music, as did radio from Cuba, New Orleans and Miami.

Some of Jamaica's most famous musicians have Latin roots. Bob Marley's maternal grandfather was Cuban. "The very thing Jamaican music is most known for, the downbeat, came from Cuban music," says Cadogan. "The Latin connection has always been there."

Notch's reggaeton hit Hay Que Bueno is one more link in that decades old Latin connection, his own blend of a dancehall rhythm and Mexican guitar track. And though its success surprised him, the fact that the music fit together just confirmed what he'd heard all his life.

"People would always love to believe that everything is different, because we're divided by water and countries and colonizing and languages," he says.

"But it's still the same people and the same music, and they create new fusions. And if the fusion stays around long enough, it becomes a new genre of music."


- The Miami Herald

2007, La Raza Chicago, Inc
Publicado el 05-30-2007
La fusión de ritmos renueva la música latina
Sol Carreras
EFE
Miami.- Tras la consagración del reguetón, nuevas tendencias como el mambo urbano y el merenguetón demuestran que el futuro de la música latina está en las fusiones.
La música del cantante estadounidense Notch (Norman Howell) es igual de variada que sus orígenes familiares.
De padre jamaicano con ascendencia francesa y madre afroamericana con raíces caribeñas y portuguesas, Notch saltó a la fama como intérprete de reggae y a partir de ahí combinó sus canciones con otros ritmos como R&B, hip hop, reguetón, pop, música latina y alternativa.
"Escucho todo tipo de música en casa, por lo que me resulta más fácil mezclar géneros", dijo en una entrevista a Efe.
Actualmente el cantante, que empezó su carrera a comienzos de los noventa con el grupo "Born Jamericans", acaba de sacar al mercado su primer disco en solitario, "Raised by the people", en el que incluye el tema de merenguetón "Te pica".
Este ritmo, creado por los productores de reguetón dominicanos Luny Tunes, que mezcla merengue y reguetón, es para Notch un ejemplo de cómo las fusiones fomentan la creatividad y ayudan a que surjan nuevos géneros musicales.
"La música es un lenguaje universal que comparte muchas similitudes y es sorprendente encontrar artistas destacados que lo hacen al mostrar cómo todos los ritmos están conectados entre sí", comentó.
Notch es una de las nuevas estrellas de la discografía Machete Music, una rama del grupo Universal que se dedica a la música urbana y agrupa artistas del género como los músicos de reguetón Luny Tunes, Don Omar, Wisin y Yandel, Héctor "El father" y la intérprete española de hip hop Mala Rodríguez.
Su presidente, Gustavo López, considera que los artistas se han animado a arriesgar con su música y ahora buscan las fusiones para sobrevivir.
"La penetración de Internet y la aceptación de música urbana en Estados Unidos, fundamentalmente reguetón, ha abierto las puertas a otros ritmos bailables que utilizan fusiones", señaló y comentó que estas mezclas pueden ser de música o de lenguaje, como en el caso de la bachata urbana y la música regional mexicana.
Para López los cantantes que fusionan tratan de conectar con los jóvenes, que por su poder de distribución son los que definen los nuevos estilos y ritmos, entre los que también se encuentra el mambo urbano o mambo de la calle, un tipo de merengue adaptado a los tiempos modernos.
Uno de sus impulsores, Anthony Pérez, presidente de la discografía de música urbana "The roof records", explicó a Efe que este nuevo ritmo nació hace cuatro años en República Dominicana pero se limitaba a ciertos barrios de la capital.
"Se le puso ese nombre porque al igual que el reguetón y el hip hop estadounidense son ritmos que vienen de la calle y que manifiestan las evoluciones de nuestros pueblos y de nuestra música", comentó.
Pérez se dio cuenta en un viaje a República Dominicana de que el mambo de la calle era un ritmo propio del lugar al igual que ocurrió con el reguetón en Puerto Rico y decidió darle a conocer con el programa de televisión "The factory by the roof" y más adelante con el disco "Mambo Factory, vol 1".
Este álbum, que salió a la calle el pasado mes de marzo, recoge canciones de representantes de este nuevo ritmo en Santo Domingo como DJ Ricky, Whistyn y Iky rap, Winston Paulino y Pacheman y Griselito, a los que Pérez calificó como los "revolucionarios" de un género que tuvo como precursores a los grupos Alibabanda y Omega.
El productor señaló que el lugar de origen es importante a la hora de decidir los géneros pero no considera que por ello haya rivalidad entre naciones.
"No es una guerra, es algo más cultural, el merengue es algo nuestro y estamos orgullosos de nuestro ritmo, dio a conocer nuestra república", declaró Pérez, nacido en Santo Domingo.
Añadió que a diferencia del merengue original el baile del mambo urbano, que combina movimientos de reguetón, reguee y merengue, es suelto y las letras hablan de asuntos de la juventud de forma jocosa y con dobles sentidos.
Pérez aseguró que "todos los géneros tienden a fusionarse para desarrollarse" y recordó que el reguetón nació como fusión y ahora vuelve a fundirse porque "los jóvenes se han cansado y la gente quiere cosas nuevas".
Como ejemplo citó los casos de los reguetoneros Tego Calderón y Héctor "El father", que ya han grabado temas de mambo urbano, y señaló entre otras fusiones novedosas las que incluyen ritmos colombianos como el vallenato, unas mezclas que observa con posibilidades ya que "todo depende del producto que se busque".EFE

- La Raza Chicago

Notch: Cross Colors
Published Wednesday, June 06, 2007 9:00 PM

http://allhiphop.com/blogs/alternatives/archive/2007/06/06/18137112.aspx
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When the now defunct Born Jamericans swam the mainstream in the mid ‘90s, it was the breezy melodies of Notch that lingered in the ears of Hip-Hop and reggae fans alike. Known for hits like “Boom Shak-a-Tack,” “Send My Love” and “Yardcore,” Born Jamericans were kids from foreign that added a twist to reggae/dancehall on American soil. The duo parted ways in ’98 but left a permanent mark in music. Now, Notch returns with his solo debut Raised By the People, a very different look into his diverse heritage, with elements of his Cuban, Puerto Rican, and of course, Jamaican roots.

We caught up with Notch on his birthday. Feeling a little under the weather - because he was sick, not because he was another year older - Notch still managed to drop some science on the history of Jamaican meets Latin fusion. He explains his own background and the difficulties his former label Delicious Vinyl had in placing him post-Jamerican years. While the Latin community readily embraced the new Notch, he recalls his journey back into the spotlight – from underground dancehall in Jamaica, to joining the reggaeton movement in Puerto Rico. One thing is for certain; Notch possesses a voice that carries through any genre and any language, effortlessly.

AllHipHop.com Alternatives: First off, what does “cheke leke pan keke” mean?

Notch: Oh it means, “Everything is irie; everything is chillin’, everything is cool.” It’s actually Hondurian slang. When I was in Honduras one time, I heard someone say, “Cheke leke pan keke” and it reminded me of a slang that these Jamaican kids use in Brooklyn when they say “ke ke ke ke ke.” That’s like salutin’ somebody or sayin’ “pull it pull it.”

AHHA: Is that like “rrra rrra rrra”?

Notch: Exactly!

AHHA: Well you have people shouting “cheke leke pan keke” everywhere.

Notch: Everywhere I travel, I sociologically adapt to the slang and dialect of the different people that get into my music that I get into as far as what they have to offer, and I always try to make it mainstream or whatever.

AHHA: Well it stuck, just like another phrase you popularized years back, which was “boom shak-a-tack” when you were in Born Jamericans. What happened with Born Jamericans?

Notch: We broke up in like ’98. I think just maturity [broke up Born Jamericans]. We met like a creative ceiling, and we dealt with a lot of label pressures of them saying, “You guys can go further than what you are if you experiment more outside of your sound. You should sing more. You should sing more R&B; you should sing more of the pop side of your voice that you’re capable of doing that you keep on hiding or holding back on.” I think our success started to supercede our internal control.

Like we had management and then we didn’t have management, and we still had a few singles out there, where there was still a demand for us to keep on touring and doing more stuff. But like so much stuff wasn’t administratively in order, that one thing started to supercede the other and it crumbled us. So we were like, “Let’s just throw in the towel and start all over.” And that’s kind of what happened. We broke up in ’98, I stayed in DC or Maryland, for like six months and then I moved to New York in ’99, and I’ve been in New York ever since.

AHHA: What did you do when you moved to New York?

Notch: When I went to New York, I ended up going to Jamaica for like three months and recorded a lot of hardcore dancehall records. I think when we were the Born Jamericans, we got perceived as a diluted or watered down version of Jamaica. We got a backlash with us being so commercially viable with our videos being on BET and being shown so much when that’s not really coming from Jamaica and our records’ [are] not sounding like traditional hardcore dancehall music.

So I kind of wanted to know that I could meet the challenge of having tight dancehall records without the videos or label support and that people would embrace me without the visual marketing theatrics that most people are able to created stars out of. So I went down there and put it down. Actually, right before [Born Jamericans] broke up, I found a Tony Touch/Doo Wop/Diaz Brothers mixtape where they were going back and forth bilingual style and I decided to go into my childhood memories of me going to bilingual elementary school and all the words that I knew that were on the mixtape.

My grandfather was Cuban and Jamaican. I heard him speak patois and speak Spanish back and forth, and my mother’s side of the family is Puerto Rican and Black. They always spoke English and Spanish. So I said, “Let me try this melodically.” I tried them out in Jamaica on a riddim called Outlaw Riddim called “Ay Que Bueno.” Somehow somebody brought me to Puerto Rico and asked me to remix my song and do a reggaeton remix before I even knew what reggaeton was about. So I got kind of thrown into the reggaeton world while taking care of my reggae/dancehall hardcore dreams. Here we are today a couple of years later with a deal and a new solo album in another direction, but still the same sound.

AHHA: Wow. That’s crazy how that happened.

Notch: Yeah I think it was an organic, natural transition that was bound to happen. Jamaicans migrate to Cuba, they migrate to Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and wherever they migrate, they take on the sound of what is commonly known there. They come to America with the Kool Hercs, the Special Eds, the KRS-Ones, the Heavy D’s. I mean they end up doing some interpretation of it; their own music with a new flair. I think me having that background of me studying reggae and my father being a reggae bass player and me studying reggae for years since I was in my mother’s stomach until now.

I’ve learned that reggae can be flipped so many different ways and reggae falls into so many different music forms. They borrow the best elements of other people’s music forms. So it was an easy transition for me. It was natural. It wasn’t like, “Yo my career is over with Born Jamericans, the dancehall thing ain’t takin’ off. Let me play up the me looking Spanish and let me get in the reggaeton scene.”

AHHA: Did you look for another record deal?

Notch: Actually, when we broke up, [Delicious Vinyl] kept me. They said, “You’ve gotta stay with us, and you’ve gotta give us your first solo album.” I kept giving them all this Spanish material, and they were like, “How do we go from marketing you from being Jamerican to now being Cubarican. Like we don’t see the connection.” They knew my family was Puerto Rican. They’d see my family when they showed up to my video shoots, but they never thought there was a connection. I always knew there was a connection.

I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. There’s not much of anything but Puerto Ricans and Black Americans. Everybody looking at themselves differently, but I’ve seen the similarities and have been able to use melodies to express the similarities and try to break down some of the barriers that people try to create for themselves when they limit themselves as just Puerto Rican, or Jamaican, or Black or whatever. I had confidence in it, but the label didn’t and they was like, “We’re gonna have to drop you if you keep submitting more Spanish songs.”

I didn’t have Daddy Yankee or Tego or nobody out at that time for them to say, “Yeah let’s jump on this.” I was kind of like a lonely soldier doing it from like ’99 to 2003 before the whole Tegoton or Yankeeton kicked in, so I was on my own doing it and I stuck it out. That’s why I’m here right now in the situation I am in right now.

AHHA: What’s interesting is how when artists from the era of Born Jamericans took a break from the spotlight and try to come back out now, they struggle with getting back on the radio. You came back out and went right into rotation on Latin radio.

Notch: You know what? It’s funny…good thing that Spanish people love reggae music from Jamaica. They’re not so biased towards their own Spanish version of reggae that they only love reggaeton. They love good music; everybody loves good music, but they love reggae music. They loved the song I did on a dance riddim called The Buyout called “Nuttin No Go So” and they never made the connection that I was the same person who sang “Ay Que Bueno,” so them embracing that riddim gave me even more credibility with them embracing my reggaeton record.

It was a good thing I got on dancehall riddims and I was low key, and nobody knew where I was and couldn’t pinpoint me or pigeonhole me according to a video or according to a look or saying he’s this or he’s that. They kind of just grew with me organically, and I think the DJ’s really got me back on the radio because it was something different, something new that they hadn’t really heard before. There’s always been Notches out there. Sometimes labels don’t have an easy time trying to market artists that are too multi-genred and use their voice differently with different vocal tones and different styles. Sometimes it’s a record company’s nightmare.

Artists like myself, we get caught on as time goes by. I’m just glad that somewhere somehow people just naturally embraced me. Like Beenie Man got me on his album, Elephant Man got me on a remix that did well in Canada, Thievery Corporation, they have me on two of their records – “The Richest Man in Babylon” and “Amerimacka” that kept me in Europe…a lot of collabs. All those collabs helped to additionally brand me, and now I have the album Raised By the People where instead of me singing eight bars like an appeteazer, they get to hear the whole caboodle

I’ve been holding back all these years. It’s still reggae, it’s still R&B, it’s still Hip-Hop, it’s still reggae roots, it’s like an extension of Jamericans. I just let go and opened up. I wasn’t as afraid to experiment on this project. I knew I had to please a lot of different people. With me having so many different backgrounds and me looking like I could fit anywhere, people considered me like, “Yo, you’re our guy. Why are you working with them? What about us?” So I had to work quadruple time on trying to make all different kinds of music, keeping everybody kinda…knowin’ I ain’t desert them. But who knows? No matter how much I try to please everybody, people just can’t please everybody.

AHHA: How did you go about speaking “Spatoinglish”?

Notch: I think the best way to explain it is it’s a dialect similar to speaking in Spanglish. First generation Spanish folks move here, they have kids, and carry the language with them over to America and they take on the native language. A lot of Jamaicans when they migrated to Cuba for work or Panama or Costa Rica, they took their patois with them but they spoke Spanish, and when they went back to speaking English, they spoke the broken dialect of like a patois. So it’s nothing that I created, it’s just something that’s probably been on the low and American hadn’t gotten hip to it yet and artists hadn’t used it yet.

Pinchers used it in the early ‘90s on a song called “Bandelero.” Jamaica has a fascination with Western movies and with Mexicans, and anything dealing with Latin culture, Jamaicans latch onto it. Cuban radio bleeds into Jamaica, so a lot of Cuban music influences reggae music. [Spatoinglish] is something that’s always been there. Harry Belafonte tried it in on a song called “Matilda” where he did patois and Spanish. I’m just probably the fourth or fifth one to take it upon myself and express it my way from an American standpoint.

AHHA: Where do you see reggaeton going?

Notch: Reggae has been around for years, so anything that reggae touches or creates a spin-off music is gonna be around just as long. I think reggaeton is only going to be as important as America needs to target more Latin people. The more tight beats that come out of Puerto Rico that aren’t as monotonous and has more merengue in it, more bachata in it, more cumbia in it, more R&B in it, with that reggaeton treatment, they’re always gonna have girls move their pelvic area. The dancehalls need it and the DJs will always feel the need to play it.

- All Hip-Hop.com