The Wilfred Limonious Archive

Here's a fun stocking stuffer. I recently bought Super Cat's great early LP, Si Boops Deh! (Techniques, 1986--not to be confused with the lesser Boops!), which features a wonderful cartoon rendition of Cat passing out money to all of his gal friends on the back cover ("boops" being Jamaican slang for "sugar daddy"). The artwork was signed "Limonious", and when I Googled the name I found The Wilfred Limonious Archive, which is a wonderful collection of the 100+ album covers designed by Limonious that so mark the style of '80s dancehall records. On the one hand, Limonious was a kind of Caribbean Russ Meyer, seemingly obsessed with large breasts and very adept at portraying them in colorful attire. On the other hand, he was a skilled caricaturist whose portraits of reggae/dancehall stars like Frankie Paul, Sugar Minott, Augustus Pablo, General Trees, Early B, Carl Meeks, Charlie Chaplin, Coco Tea, Barrington Levy, Half Pint, Willi Williams, Yellowman, etc etc, are not without real wit. And still further, as the website notes, he pioneered the hard-edge, computerized, sub-Tron stylings that perfectly complement the post-Sleng Teng era of digital dancehall. His illustrations are less like the cartoons on Scientist's Greensleeves releases than the ones on Miles Davis' On the Corner, a curious mix of slackness and culture that still marks the dancehall today. I've posted a few samples below of this rude and crude folk art, leaving asides the ones that are just plain dirty (like Josie [Josey] Wales' classic Undercover Lover, Little John's River to the Bank, or Robert Ffrench's The Favourite). In some cases, the art is the only thing worth 2 cents on these LPs, which are generally of the super-local variety--cheap cardboard sleeves with the label, its address and/or phone number listed on the back.

Unfortunately, it seems like not much, if anything, is known about Limonious, and rumor has it that he recently passed. If you have any information, feel free to share! And happy holidays!

 

Comments

[Infinestyle.wordpress.com]

Great post Seth!

You are right that there is very little information about Limonious floating around, but you are correct that he has passed away.

I have been following/collecting Limonious's art and career for some time now and was recently in Jamaica where I met with many of his friends and family.

I started a little blog over here: http://infinestyle.wordpress.com/ to share a few of my findings and hopefully shed some light on his pre-record jacket artistic career (including a lot of cool newspaper cartoons!).

Bless.

Chris (infinestylereggae@gmail.com)