Memphis reggae legends Chinese Connection Dub Embassy are back with another rock steady beat.
Keybaordist Joseph Higgins says “Back Bitah Sound” is all about betrayal. “The original muse for this song came from one of my favorite movies of all time, Juice with Tupac, Omar Epps and more,” he says. “It shows how, at one point, individuals can grow up together, and be the best of friends, but the decisions they make can split them up to become mortal enemies. But in David’s [Higgins] verse he points out individuals being gatekeepers and not wanting to see each other succeed because of ego-driven ideologies. Also, the second verse brings in Jamaica’s own I-Sypha, bringing that synergy when speaking on Babylon’s evil ways and how they hold us back but we are stronger than they think.”
David Yancy III directed the video, which is in stark black and white. Take a look.
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Omar Higgins, the trailblazing bass player and front man of Chinese Connection Dub Embassy and Negro Terror, will receive a posthumous Brass Note at Handy Park on Beale Street at 5 p.m. on April 18th, with a celebration concert to follow.
Higgins died suddenly of septic shock on April 18th, 2019 at the age of 37. Shortly thereafter, the Memphis Flyer‘s Chris McCoy published this remembrance of him and this story on how the Memphis music community reacted to his death.
“We will celebrate Omar’s legacy and all the genres of music he loved performing, and we will cement that legacy with a Brass Note on the legendary Beale Street,” said brother David Higgins in a statement. “Omar’s friends and family all around the world can then look at April 18th as a day of celebration, and not just sorrow.”
That celebration will feature a multi-genre bill reflecting the diversity and number of musicians and fans who were touched by Higgins’ life. Kween Jasira, Danny Cosby, SvmDvde, PreauXX, Moses Crouch, Ryan Peel, Tonya Dyson and others will join the Chinese Connection Dub Embassy house band to perform one song each.
Higgins brothers Joseph and David have continued to perform and release material as Chinese Connection Dub Embassy, as detailed in a recent Memphis Flyer feature, and also have plans to revive Negro Terror.
“Omar was a joyous, ebullient figure, whose devotion to music and those he loved was total,” Joseph Higgins noted in a statement. “The day will serve as a celebration of his legacy and contribution to the Memphis arts community.”
In being honored thus, Omar Higgins will join over 180 other artists and pivotal music industry figures who populate the Beale Street Brass Notes Walk of Fame. Notably, he is arguably the first punk rock/reggae artist to be celebrated by the organization.
To cover event costs,organizers are raising funds through an ioby crowdfunding campaign. Donations of up to $2,000 will be matched by ioby.
You might not expect to hear a host of original tunes at a tribute show, but David Higgins feels it’s a necessary part of the upcoming Railgarten event, Forever Loving Marley, on Saturday, February 4th.
“We incorporate our originals within the traditional Bob Marley songs. All the artists are going to be doing that at the show,” says Higgins, the guitarist for headliner Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE). Not only does he see it as being in the spirit of Marley’s creativity, he’s itching to perform the songs of the reggae band live again after several years of upheaval.
For both David and his brother Joseph, who plays keyboards in the group, the worst upheaval imaginable was losing their brother Omar in the spring of 2019, age 37, after he suffered a stroke and a staph infection. Throw in the pandemic, and it’s a miracle that CCDE made any music at all in recent years, especially given that Omar was the founder and driving force of the band. And yet they did, releasing the excellent Crew Vibez album, which marked a shift in their sound, mixing traditional reggae with hip-hop and dancehall. Still, there have been precious few live shows since Omar’s death.
Joseph and David Higgins of Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (Photo: Antonio Hobson)
“We’re gonna put our best foot forward with this music,” says Joseph. “It’s almost like we’re rebranding everything. Without Omar, we’ve had to start from scratch with a lot of stuff. This is the first official show of ours this year. What better way to kick off 2023 than with some positive, good vibes?”
And, as noted, original music. If any band has earned the right to put their own songs side by side with those of Marley, it’s CCDE. “I won’t be bought, I won’t be sold/We will decide how our story’s told,” they sing on “Dem A Callin’ (Flodgin),” and the band is deciding how their new tale will be told even now. Part of that means recapturing their initial approach to reggae.
“Crew Vibez was something nobody had ever heard from us, really,” says David. “And they loved it. We got invited to Afro Punk [Festival] and other places. So we want to continue that sound, but we’ve got to put the live instrumentation in it, too. Our sound is not going to be so digital.”
But the Higgins brothers stress that the Marley tribute is about more than CCDE; several other artists will be performing, including cameos from Kween Jasira and dancehall artist I-Sypha during CCDE’s set. And JParris from the Virgin Islands will bring his band, Carib Vibes, for some authentic Caribbean spirit. But, as David notes, the event will already have plenty of that. “When we do these Marley tributes, it doesn’t even feel like we’re in the Railgarten because we try to put that whole island aesthetic into the look, the sound, everything. From lights to palm trees and tapestries.”
Beyond that, there will be plenty of other local groups mixing Marley with their magic, including Yubu & the Ancient Youth, Black Cream, and Moses Crouch.
Meanwhile, David Higgins is deeply involved in Omar’s other musical legacy, the celebrated hardcore group known as Negro Terror. Given that their popularity once outstripped that of CCDE, carrying the torch of Negro Terror forward has been the greater burden for David, who always played guitar in the group, but now carries the extra duties of front man. But he wants people to know that Negro Terror will live on.
“People want product, product, product, and I felt like I left the fans in the dark,” David says of the time after his brother’s death. “I couldn’t respond to them because we were going through so much in the pandemic, and health-wise personally, I was going through a lot. But I never wanted to stop the band. I want all his projects to continue, especially CCDE and Negro Terror. I want them to keep growing, and I’m in the process of starting Negro Terror up again. I want to tell the fans, ‘Hey, it’s going on, guys! Calm down!’ Not only are you going to get the unreleased material; you’re going to get two new records that we’ve already started working on. With y’all’s support, we can get together and make some new memories, and keep the legacy going in a whole other way. That’s the goal, that’s the dream.”
Chinese Connection Dub Embassy is back with a new song, and a new collaborator. Joseph Higgins takes the lead on the Memphis reggae powerhouse’s “So Grateful.” Ryan Peel, who has been behind the console for the band since the death of founder Omar Higgins, once again shows off his smooth production philosophy. This time around, the Connection is joined by TIAH, and the singer brings a blast of charisma with each verse.
The cover of Crew Vibez, the fresh album that Chinese Connection Dub Embassy drops this Friday, has a portrait of brothers Joseph and David Higgins in shades of red, gold, and green — rather appropriate, given that they are Memphis’ premiere purveyors of reggae. But among the faint letters in the background, nestled among words like “irie” and “truth,” is the name Omar. As their fans know, that’s their eldest brother, who founded the band with them (along with the hardcore punk band Negro Terror) and passed away unexpectedly in April of last year.
The fact that the brothers carried on with the project is a testament to the entire family’s love of music. “My dad was a drummer; my mother was a saxophone player,” David tells me. “And our mother was West Indian as well. We came from New York to Mississippi and Memphis. We were more about the Jamaican reggae and skinhead culture. Working class, for the people, by the people.” And some tracks on the new album reflect this directly, such as politically charged songs like “Dem A Callin’ (Flodgin’)” and “Warzone.”
Chinese Connection Dub Embassy
But this is an album full of surprises, and the biggest may be the group’s embrace of other styles beyond the classic reggae they’ve purveyed in the past. As Joseph says, “It’s a compilation of different kinds of reggae, from dancehall to straight-up roots. Some feel-good tunes. We’re even tapping into a little bit of Memphis hip-hop with some of our friends. We still pay respect to reggae as a whole, but we wanna give a Memphis vibe to it. I think this project will really open peoples’ minds.”
And while the group typically opens minds with their unique brand of consciousness-raising roots music a la Peter Tosh, this new work aims to open hearts as well. Many of the tracks, from lead single “Honey” to “Melanin Queen” or “So Grateful,” explore a sound that combines classic “lover’s rock” with drum-machine-heavy dancehall beats.
As executive producer Ryan Peel notes, the two surviving brothers are “reinventing Chinese Connection Dub Embassy. Joseph and Dave know what I do. I’m a pop producer more than anything. Usually that lands in the realm of rap and R&B. They wanted a newer element in the sound, but also someone who understood the history and the different rhythmic choices for each of those sub-genres. So that’s how we moved into it being dancehall heavy.”
Peel has known the Higgins brothers for years, and has often drummed for them in the classic roots reggae style they perfected. But this time around, he was programming beats, not playing them. “I wanted it to sound like a hip-hop record, but with the music itself being dancehall and reggae,” he says. Indeed, the album features several local rappers and R&B singers as guests. “Tia ‘Songbird’ Henderson is on one track. ‘Warzone’ has the rappers SvmDvde and Hannya Chao$, who’s really guttural and primal. And Harley Quinn, R.I.C.O. Tha Akronym, Webbstar, and Sebastian Carson are also featured.”
While David has always been the guitarist of the group, this album doesn’t feature much of that. “One song, ‘Never Gonna Break Your Heart,’ starts out with flamenco guitar,” says Peel. “And he smashed it in one take! But I don’t think David was necessarily thinking of himself as a guitarist on this record. I think he was thinking, ‘I’m a lead vocalist now.’ I was like, ‘Damn, dude! Where have you been? You should have been out here! Omar should have let you sing more!'”
For most of the songs, Peel says, “Joseph would write the chords and a basic drum part, then I’d soup it up.” Once the beats were sequenced, Joseph, a keyboardist, would flesh out the arrangements, starting with the bass. “He’s the sub-bass king! He killed it. It’s almost like Joseph said, ‘All right, what would Omar do? Let me pull out my synth-bass version of Omar on this.’ As a drummer who played with Omar for years, I feel that in my heart. It feels right. For people who knew CCDE with Omar, this isn’t going to be too alien to them.”
The singer, songwriter, and rapper Webbstar has one message for music fans: Expect the unexpected. Over his years of music making, he’s skipped across multiple genres, sometimes in a single song. Starting as a young rapper, his first record, Cuffing Season, also showed considerable melodic and R&B chops. The dawn of 2020 saw him introducing serious rock elements into his sound, especially with the single, “Shine,” which could be a collaboration with Gary Clark Jr., but it really springs from his partnership with Micah Wilshire and Ryan Peel. Peel has been integral to Webbstar’s most recent work, further broadening his production palette this summer in having him record with local reggae masters Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE).
That stroke of genius yielded two hot summer singles, “Bad Bad Ting,” a tribute to a certain woman’s hotness released under Peel’s name, featuring both Webbstar and CCDE, and the politically woke “Dem A Callin (Flodgin),” credited to CCDE, featuring Webbstar. Now, under his own name, Webbstar has released a new single created by the same collaboration, the hypnotic reggae soul of “South Memphis Woman.”
Raven Wiseman
Webbstar wants his fans to expect the unexpected.
The stylistic shift might surprise anyone who’s known Webbstar as Derrick Webb, a rapper since grade school, when he had a partner who’s since gained considerable acclaim. “I also work with Memphis Track Boy,” Webb explains. “He produced a lot of stuff for Moneybagg Yo, BlocBoy JB, and other big-time guys. And a lot of Cuffing Season was done with Memphis Track Boy. He’s had a lot of success. But I’ve known him since third grade! Then we started doing music when I was a sophomore in high school. By 10th grade, I had already recorded a mixtape. And he was doing beats already. He had a studio in his mom’s house. So we linked up, and the next year, I created a song for my football team. I was a junior at Whitehaven High School.”
Football fed his rap talents, but also opened up new perspectives when he got a scholarship to play with the University of Colorado Buffaloes. “I did all that rapping in Memphis, then I went to college in Colorado, with a whole different scene, a whole different culture. I started to really explore different music styles at that time. And I’d say that made me a songwriter. It gave me the ability to move between genres. There’s a lot of different ways into the game.”
“South Memphis Woman,” for example, first grew out of Webb’s other great musical love. “My granddaddy used to always play the blues,” he says, “taking me to football games on Saturday mornings. So I had the blues feel, like most Memphis children do.” And that’s what he had in mind when writing the song. “‘South Memphis Woman’ had been in the works in my head, only in my head, for about a year. And I imagined doing it as some kind of soulful blues … a kind of hole-in-the-wall type of feel.”
But then came his sessions with CCDE. “We started getting in the studio together, and Ryan brought it up. And when we created it right there on the spot, with Chinese Connection Dub Embassy, they took it in a reggae direction, and it was perfect. I think it was just meant for them to be on that song. They’re so talented, as soon as Ryan told them the idea, we made it immediately. Right there on the spot. That’s all it took.”
The track sports CCDE’s trademark groove with subtle atmospherics, Webbstar’s soulful singing, background vocals, and horn punches, adding up to a sound evoking reggae from decades past. As Webb notes, it may not be the direction of most music coming out of Memphis, or anywhere, these days, but he’s undeterred. “Because of the modern thing, some of the better reggae groups today are just not noticed. It’s not in the pop culture right now. It’s its own lane.”
He seems to relish surprising music fans with such twists and turns. “It can be hard for people to grab a hold of it at first, until they see the consistency. I’m gonna rap, I’m gonna make some melodies, I’m gonna give you lyrical content, but I’ve been keeping people guessing. I want people to know they can expect the unexpected. But whatever I make, it’s going to have my DNA in it.”
Chinese Connection Dub Embassy’s partnership with producer Ryan Peel has produced another banger. “Honey” features R.I.C.O. the Akronym, aka Rico Fields, who was a bandmate of CCDE’s late frontman Omar Higgins in their anti-racist hardcore band Negro Terror. The Akronym proves he can lay down some sensual flow just as well as he can spit out searing guitar lines.
The summer breeze of a video is directed by Peel. Check out David Higgins’ diving board guitar solo!
Music Video Monday: Chinese Connection Dub Embassy ft. R.I.C.O. The Akronym and Ryan Peel
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After the 2019 death of their activist leader, Omar Higgins, Chinese Connection Dub Embassy vowed to keep making making waves by making reggae. As the pandemic has burned and Black Lives Matter street protests raged, CCDE’s brothers Joseph and David Higgins have been playing at the demonstrations and prepping a new album with the help of producer Ryan Peel and rapper Webbstar. “We were actually in the middle of mixing another song, and I stopped in between and said, ‘I have to get this tune off my chest.'” says Joseph Higgins.
The song was “Dem A Callin (Flodgin)” which Joseph and Omar had co-written. “I brought him a template of the beat and he (Ryan) put the finishing touches on it and we recorded it right there in a few hours. Then we brought our guy Webbstar in on it and he just took the song to a whole other level.”
CCDE see themselves as part of the great reggae tradition of making liberation politics groovy. “During this time with COVID -19, police brutality, and just racism as a whole, we talk about what can we do as artists to bring awareness to these issues. We said, ‘Let’s use our gifts to express our emotions through music, because music is a weapon. Whether artists know it or not, our voice speaks louder than we think, and when we’re quiet, the narrative stands that we (artists) don’t care about social issues. Let’s just make some turn-up music and be on our way.”
David Higgins produced and David Yancy III directed the video, which Joseph says is “… giving off the energy that the only way we’re going to get through these times is together. And until we are treated as equals, the fight is never over. #BLM all day!”
Music Video Monday: Chinese Connection Dub Embassy
Here’s a blast of summer fun from Memphis mix master Ryan Peel. He teamed up with reggae giants Chinese Connection Dub Embassy and frequent collaborator Webbstar for the dancehall-infused “Bad Bad Ting”. It’s a cool drink of water for a long, hot summer.
Music Video Monday: Ryan Peel ft. Chinese Connection Dub Embassy and Webbstar
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Local reggae fusion band Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE) recently lost a member and a brother, lead vocalist and bassist Omar Higgins, but his legacy continues.
The band, founded in 2010 by Omar and his brothers Joseph and David, has always been known to be philanthropically spirited, with performances benefiting organizations like Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital.
Chinese Connection Dub Embassy
“It’s always been important to us to remain active in our community,” says Joseph, the band’s keyboardist and vocalist.
For the last six years, the reggae-rooted group has raised funds for Le Bonheur through their annual Live Up Fest, and this year is no different.
In addition to hosting a raffle benefiting the children’s hospital, this year’s Live Up Fest will feature a performance by CCDE and special surprise guests. Others taking the stage include Darius Phatmak Clayton, Johnny Love, and The Irie Lions.
“All of the artists playing have roots in reggae, but each of them have their own unique styles,” says Joseph.
Darius Phatmak Clayton (Memphis) exhibits hip-hop and spoken word styles, Johnny Love (Santa Anna, California) performs elements of Latin music, The Irie Lions (Fayetteville, Arkansas) combine jazz and funk sounds with reggae dub, and Flux (Florence, Alabama) plays experimental jam music.
“Ultimately, the goal of the festival really is just to bring people together, and, at least for a couple of hours, for everyone to forget about all the negativity in the world and have a good time,” Joseph says. “Expect good vibes, and nothing but.”
Live Up Fest, Railgarten, July 27th, 6 p.m.-1 a.m., $10.
Raven Wiseman 
