IN 1992, deejay Shabba Ranks was riding high, looking to break big in the United States after five years of dominating Jamaican charts.

Just one year earlier, he had secured a recording deal with American record company Epic, making him one of the first dancehall acts to sign with a major label.

Shabba created a first for dancehall that year when his As Raw As Ever won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album.

As he prepared to drop his second album for Epic, X-tra Naked, Shabba was hanging with R&B singer Johnny Gill when they had the idea to collaborate on a single — Slow and Sexy.

Twenty-two years later, Gill, who was recently in Jamaica for the Soul in The Sun Music Festival in Montego Bay, remembers the genesis of the track.

“Shabba’s a good friend of mine. He came by the house and we were just hanging out, and he was like, ‘let’s do something together… collaborate’. Right there we decided to do something. We then called in (producers) Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and they came up with it and it was very cool,” Gill recalled.

Gill included Slow and Sexy in his set in Montego Bay last weekend, even doing Shabba’s part on the track.

Slow and Sexy helped introduce Shabba to a wider North American audience. Appearances on popular television programmes, including the highly touted Arsenio Hall Show, followed.

Slow and Sexy was included on X-tra Naked, which won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.

— Richard Johnson