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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Anyone who has lived through a summer in the city knows that there is no force in the world stronger than girls singing along to the radio while skipping rope. Without them, the season might as well merge with spring and be done with it. A song that proves it this summer is "Move Ya Body," by Nina Sky, featuring Jabba (Next Plateau/Universal). It's one of the many songs employing reworked dance-hall "rhythms," the backing tracks that singers and m.c.s in Jamaica use as a foundation for their own records. (It is common practice in Jamaica for a rhythm to be used by upward of thirty performers.) Last year, several American pop singers and m.c.s sang over a rhythm full of handclaps known as Diwali, which was originally produced by a man named Steven (Lenky) Marsden. This year, the rhythm being used here is called Coolie Dance, created by a producer named Cordell (Scatta) Burrell. It rides a steady handclap and a bongo sound, less syncopated than Diwali but faster, inching toward disco. A Jamaican performer named Mr. Vegas had some success with a version called "Pull Up," and an ode to large behinds called "Culo," by a Cuban-American rapper named Pitbull, is currently on the charts. But it's "Move Ya Body" that sounds like Flatbush Avenue with the fire hydrants open and the radios on. Nina Sky is actually two girls, Nicole and Natalie Albino, who are eighteen-year-old twins of Puerto Rican descent. Their voices are as light as the beat, almost distracted,...
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