Currentzicks revives mento with dancehall edge on Hill And Gully

Currentzicks is taking mento out of the archive and dropping it into a dancehall frame that still feels ready for a sound-system. His Hill And Gully, released on the Inviting riddim through Most Wanted Records in Spanish Town, uses old Jamaican cultural memory without turning into a novelty act.

The timing matters. The single landed in the middle of Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor’s broader Hill & Gully rollout, a project first released on April 30, 2026 that one riddim listing puts at 91 tracks from 84 unique artists. McGregor has said he wanted to tap deeper into Jamaican culture and reintroduce mento to new listeners, and Currentzicks has come in with a cut that is built to work in today’s dance spaces, not just on a nostalgia playlist.

That balance is the point. Currentzicks said mento has long lived in his musical imagination, and Hill And Gully tries to preserve the cultural expression while giving it enough contemporary energy to connect with younger listeners. The song also reaches straight into national memory through Hill an’ Gully Ride, the long-running television program that helped shape his interest in traditional Jamaican customs. Television Jamaica’s CPTC says Hill an’ Gully Ride is Jamaica’s second-longest-running local TV series, hosted by broadcaster and author Carey Robinson, whose voice became inseparable from the show before he died on January 27, 2021, at age 97.

Currentzicks is not coming at this as a newcomer chasing a trend. He has been recording for more than 10 years, and earlier songs like Bull ina Pen and Top Johncrow already showed that he understands how to move between local flavor and broad appeal. In 2023, Bull Ina Pen had more than 30,000 TikTok posts using the audio and about 300,000 video views, a sign that he can turn a sharp idea into something people actually use.

The revival has also opened a harder conversation. Fae Ellington publicly criticized explicit songs built on the Hill & Gully Ride melody and said entertainers should know better, which underlines how sensitive this material still is when it leaves the folk lane and enters modern dancehall. That tension is exactly why Hill And Gully lands with some weight: it is not just borrowing an old tune, it is testing how far Jamaica’s roots can be pushed and still feel like part of the culture.

Currentzicks has made the case that mento does not have to sit still to stay respected. On Hill And Gully, the old line still holds, but the beat now has enough edge to carry it into the present.