TEMPO
Waterhouse goes digital from Tubby’s side of the street. Anthony Red Rose’s 1985 “Tempo” rode a computerized drum-and-bass foundation and became a sound-system anthem with a disputed place in digital dancehall’s origin story.
Anthony Red Rose arrived at King Tubby’s Waterhouse studio in 1985 with a song he had already been using around sound systems. Tubby encouraged him to record it over a computerized foundation, with keyboards added around the bare digital drum and bass. “Tempo” became a Jamaican hit and a durable sound-system special. Its historical importance comes with an argument attached: Red Rose has long maintained that the computerized Tempo recording preceded Wayne Smith and King Jammy’s “Under Mi Sleng Teng.” Other chronologies place Tempo as Tubby’s response after Sleng Teng had already detonated. Rather than erase that conflict, the riddim is a perfect example of why oral reggae history sometimes needs two stories held side by side.