HERITAGE: M-Beat & General Levy Join Forces For This "Incredible" British National Anthem (1994)

HERITAGE: M-Beat & General Levy Join Forces For This "Incredible" British National Anthem (1994)


November 15, 2022

Probably the most famous jungle track of all time, M-Beat and General Levy's "Incredible" hasn't faded in popularity one bit since it was released in 1994, but it wasn't an instant hit—at least not on such a wide scale.

The track was first released early in the year on Renk Records and reached a modest but respectable No. 39 on the UK Singles Chart. A few months later, after becoming the tune of Notting Hill Carnival that year, it was repackaged with some new remixes and it ended up peaking at No. 8, staying in the charts for a further 12 weeks—the first jungle track to reach the top 10 in the country.

Even General Levy—who was so self-assured as to announce to the world that he was "runnin' jungle", to the ire of the rest of the scene—was surprised to see how successful it was. In fact, Levy himself had only come to the genre recently, enamoured with the rebelliousness and the multicultural nature of the raves. Inspired by legends likes of Eek-A-Mouse, he started in the late '80s as a reggae MC, coming up via West London's Java sound system and producer Robbo Ranks' Tippatone Sound system, and collaborating with greats like Aswad, Capleton, and legendary drummer Sly Dunbar.

In the early '90s an old girlfriend introduced him to ragga MCing and jungle and he started to thrash out what he would describe as his "hiccup" style on the mic. Eventually, he connected with M-Beat (son of Renk Records founder Junior Hart) and the two started working in the studio. Taking bars from two of his previous tracks, "Wickeder General" (from his 1992 album of the same name) and "Mad Them" (from the Wickedness Increase the following year), he cherry-picked the best quotables, fleshed them out, and jungle's biggest hit was born.




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