Sampling transformed the music industry since it emerged during the early 1990s. One of its positives is introducing music from decades ago to new fans, which is what Canute Neil Ellis wants to do with his EP, Slingshot.

Released in August, it contains six songs that borrow from gospel standards like The Grace Thrillers’ He Saw My Need and Winner Man, a big hit for Lester Lewis.

Ellis collaborates with new wave gospel acts on the project which he produced.

“Revisiting these songs was one of the most fulfilling things that I have ever done. And I’ve done many projects. I think one of the reasons I found it so fulfilling is that I got to connect with these musical stalwarts and talk with them and recapture some of the early vision that they had for their projects, but then I got to connect with some of the newer, up-and-coming gospel talent and bring them in. So we had this creative melting pot,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

Rescue Me, which samples He Saw My Need, features Ellis, Noel Willis Jr (son of The Grace Thrillers founder), Raymond Chew and Samantha Gooden, Ellis’s wife.
Undefeated revisits Winner Man, and hears Ellis working with Zabbai, DJ Nicholas, and Cario Young.

My Cry samples Marvia Providence’s rollicking Hear My Cry Oh Lord, with featured acts being Golda McFarlane and Tiffany Hall. Nah Miss It recalls If I Miss Heaven by Reverend Glen Graham, on which Ellis shares the mic with Jason Mighty, J.DAT and Orville Sutherland.

“The power of this project is to introduce a new generation to songs that would be foundational to Jamaican and dare I say, Caribbean gospel. The thing is, these aren’t just my heroes; these are the heroes of anyone who has been in the [Christian] faith for the last 40 years — dare I say even close to 50 years,” Ellis explained.

The Orlando, Florida-based Ellis started his career during the 1990s when sampling became trendy. He was an engineer at the Kingston studio of Noel Willis Sr, founder of The Grace Thrillers, a group credited with breaking gospel music into the mainstream with songs like Can’t Even Walk and Jesus.

A graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Ellis has worked as an engineer on projects by Beres Hammond, Kirk Franklin and The Commodores.