Here’s a sample that has toured the world. Initially we start our trip in Jamaica where reggae artist Slim Smith records the track I’ll Never Let You Go for his album Just a Dream. I have varying sources that say the album was released in 1972 or 1968 or simply don’t know. Likewise the sources are unclear about his death, one says he tried to break into his parents house and cut his his arms on the glass and bled to death, the other that he committed suicide in1972.

Regardless of how he dies, the track stayed in Jamaica when in 1984 Jah Screechy samples I’ll Never Let You Go in his dancehall song Walk and Skank. The track borrows the bassline, but ads very distinctive vocals and a piano. As soon as you hear those, you might start to recognise the track.

Moving over to the UK in 1992, the DJ duo SL2 (Slipmatt & Lime) release the breakbeat track On A Ragga Tip on the legendary XL Recordings label (which also made The Prodigy big). That track borrows the bassline, piano and the vocals by Jah Screechy and ads a few instruments and mixes them into a breakbeat tracks that filled many a dance floor.

In the weirdest twist of this post, the track pops up in India where the Bollywood film Stunttman (with two t’s) is released in 1994. One of the film’s musical numbers is the track Amma Dekh Tera Munda Bigda Jaaye which borrows the vocal melody for its chorus, obviously inspired by SL2’s hit from two years earlier.

Last but not least, the track pops up in The Netherlands in 2004, where the Bass Solution DJ Team remixes a track titled by Ragga Trip by the Hardstylerz on a hardcore/hardstyle compilation in 2004. Obviously, it also borrows most of its samples from the SL2 version.

Little did Slim Smith knew before his death in 1972 that his track would eventually end up as a dancehall, breakbeat, Bollywood and Hardstyle tune. Since the Slim Smith video can’t be embedded, here’s my favourite version, SL2 – On a Ragga Tip: