Back in the mid 1970s, Althea Rose Forrest and Donna Marie Reid were an anomaly in the reggae music business. Here were two extremely well educated, upper middle class teenage girls representing the artistic soul of Jamaica, an island nation with a still very high illiteracy rate whose economy almost solely depends on tourism dollars to, pun intended, stay afloat. They were militant and had a wicked gift for satire in their songwriting, making sport of their country and biting the hand that should have fed them for their talents. The smaller labels in reggae, such as Lightning, were well known for their patriarchal, shady business practices. Trouble for those guys was the fact that Althea & Donna knew how to play the game and were able to become the next big thing in reggae without a contract, and the big labels like Warner Brothers eager to sign them... and pay them due to their single for "Uptown Top Ranking" climbing to the number one spot on the U.K. charts in February of 1978. Unfortunately, their few singles thereafter posted minimal buzz, and Althea & Donna faded into the footnotes.
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