Where is eek a mouse

Five Questions With caught up with him as he prepared to release his latest single. I have a big weed song from back in the day titled Ganja Smuggling. Then on the 25th, it will be another single, Dem A Parasite.

I am back on VP. I did a good show at the first one, but a ting reach me at the other show. At , Beenie Man go on stage and start call up a whole heap a artiste, and when I go check, the engineer him tell me she a dem a close the show.

But him do that because a ting did gwaan at a show in California that I did have to fling away the mic and walk off stage.

Eek-A-Mouse was also the name of a racehorse. This name is one that the kids love, and Eek-A-Mouse should really be a popular cartoon character by now if it was marketed in the right and proper way.

Warner Bros even tried to buy my name. Ludicrous, bizarre, and uniquely original, few DJs have made such a splash in the dancehall scene than Eek-A-Mouse. An artist who in any other country would have been a one-hit wonder, in Jamaica became a household name having invented a whole new vocal style, sing-jay, flooding the airwaves with his catch phrases and going on to become a respected toaster.

Eek-A-Mouse didn't start out as a novelty act. He was born Ripton Hilton in in Kingston, Jamaica, and his first foray into the music world was as a cultural roots singer. While barely out of his teens and still in college, Hilton released two singles in the mid-'70s, "My Father's Land" and "Creation," to an apathetic public. Not discouraged, the young man continued plugging away, DJing for a variety of sound systems while also releasing occasional singles, all under his real name.

To his friends, however, he was known as Eek-A-Mouse. A rather cruel jab, for that was the name of the losing racehorse Hilton kept throwing his money away on; of course as so often happens, the one time he declined to bet was the sole time the obstreperous equine won.

The name stuck and by , the singer decided a change was in order, and placed his musical fortune on this new moniker. Before the year was out, the artist had joined forces with producer Junjo Lawes and remixer Scientist. He was the toast of Reggae Sunsplash in , his bubbling lunacy providing a cathartic release to a festival otherwise in mourning for Bob Marley.

Eek saw out the year with the holiday hit, "Christmas A-Come. With "Operation Eradication," Eek proved there was a thinking man inside the mouse costume on a single inspired by the tragic vigilante killing of close friend and fellow DJ Errol Scorcher. A rabid appearance at Reggae Sunsplash was also captured on tape and released in Skidit appeared before the year closed and although it was less hit-driven than its predecessor, was just as strong nonetheless. Unfortunately, this was to be Eek's first and last album for Island.

It wasn't until that a new full-length, "Black Cowboy", appeared on the Sunset Blvd. Though his voice seemed to have dropped an octave, the breadth of subject matter, as well as his patented "bingy-boingy" style indicated that Da Mouse was still "in the house. Also, appearing on various riddim albums from the UK.

A chat with Eek-A-Mouse is something of an aural adventure. More than a quarter-century of recording, global touring and enough years of residency in the suburbs of Irvine to justify an accent heavy on California mall girl-isms have hardly changed the dancehall godfather's husky Kingston patois. Though his voice is smooth and rich in tone, Mouse's unique re-imagining of English grammatical rules can prove challenging to the unprepared ear. Take a conversation touching on Mouse's feelings about his music's place among reggae's current crop of dancehall favorites.

While a couple of decades removed from the early '80s Jamaican dancehall scene that solidified his reputation as one of the genre's most irreverent and oft-copied toasters, The Mouse — as he is fond of calling himself — hardly feels his career has peaked or that his time has passed. I'm Mouse, so I can change my style any time. There's different reggae now Just like Eek-A-Mouse.

I'm also unique, you know? I was singing all the while. Then the kids got interested, and sometimes I would sing them songs. Sometimes there would be little concerts going on in school and I would participate in singing, you know?

But I knew I was gonna be a singer soon. Sam Cooke and The Beatles Mouse's contribution to the genre was a percussive, nasally vocal style, and a talent for using his voice as a musical instrument that moved The Boston Globe to call him "the Al Jarreau of reggae.