Last week I told you a bit of the beckground of Swedish Reggae. This week, the Swedish charts are topped by one of those artists, Kapten Röd (Captain Red), with his song När Solen Går Ner (When the sun goes down), also featuring AKI. The song is about the night life in what have been known as the Concrete Jungle, the urban communities around the major cities, where crime rate is higher and drugs and violence is an everyday occurrence. I will try to translate the lyrics for you, so you can follow the text, because that is what made this song so popular. They cover a subject many swedes have lived with themselves and that every swede knows about.
Boom boom, weird bre, shooting at the house facade.
The kids are speeding out, they stepped on the pedal.It goes wrom wrom, weird len,
Another one buried
The slum is ill it infects me and makes me mad
Ey yo wake up, warning, riots in the city
The people are boiling over a fire at the parliament
And a lot of weapons spins around among kids
and drugs and violence have become part of everyday lifeHey, I can not sleep any more
Everything goes up for me when the sun goes down
Could not dream me away
I see the problems under my eyelids
I can not sleep any more
Everything goes up for me when the sun goes down
Could not dream me away.I can not stop looping
Close your eyes and see the black clouds pile up
Wonder why the road should be filled out by potholes
We grow up with the feeling of having lost
Do you see where they are rooted,Oh I answer oh yah, look where you look,
Yo I see it, brooding,
Drugs in the area see my brother overdose,
Do you see how they are planning, calculating every move, yah.
Makes us into villains
Man, are they wise? Plunders them young and running away from the bill
Where are they going to go when the farm is scrapped,
Jotman are beaten and threatened, he’s in handcuffsEy yo brother, yah, I see how small problems become big
Mum’s tears flow down from the cheek when she cries
One more buried, he died where he was reside
We close our eyes so we can’t see, but you can not snooze now.For, I can not sleep any more
Everything goes up for me when the sun goes down
Could not dream me away
I see the problems under my eyelids
I can not sleep any more
Everything goes up for me when the sun goes down
Could not dream me away.When the sun goes down, the vultures start to circulate
The pigs scouts and the wolves are numerous
Hot blood turns cold when the drugs pollute
Weapons are many and the violence risesEverywhere you see people who run away, from the center to the city’s branches
The soul has been a low priority, but it’s nothing the media plays.Yo we have wilted into the root, but we stand out here and flourish
where they play their tactics and how they’ll play
oh we are just pawns, nothing more
At the bottom of a pyramid where life is’nt valuedOh the stress weighing on me like a ton of rocks
I go and wait to detonate
There must be other ways to live yo
In my dreams I see a people united!No, I can not sleep any more
Everything goes up for me when the sun goes down
Could not dream me away
I see the problems under my eyelids
I can not sleep any more
Everything goes up for me when the sun goes down
Could not dream me away.
This song, like most reggae around the world, is filled with slang, so it’s hard to translate correctly, but the meaning of the words are universal. This is a problem that Sweden isn’t alone with, most countries around the world have this problem, for some it’s bigger, but in Sweden, people chose to close their eyes to the problem. Statistics are swept under the rug and the only thing you see if you don’t live there is a short reading on the evening news, without images or video to back it up.
Kapten Röd and AKI are some of the biggest reggae artists in the “society’s darker side” style of reggae, with numerous hits in the past 15 years.
AKI ft Kapten Röd – När Solen Går Ner can be found on Spotify, as a double feature on Youtube and on iTunes.