Pressure Drop

Hibbert wrote it and Kong produced it for Beverley's in 1969. It came out as a single on Beverley's in Jamaica and Trojan in the UK, backed by Beverley's All Stars' "Smoke Screen"; release years vary across sources, from 1968 to 1970, and Wikipedia calls its own dating inconsistent. It is on the Monkey Man album (1970) and on the Harder They Come soundtrack (1972), where it is side two, track three. We could not find the studio or full personnel.

Bassist Clifton Jackie Jackson said it was the first song he and Hibbert wrote together, that Hibbert likes to record everything live, and that the backing vocals were done live in the studio. In a 2016 Guardian interview quoted by DancehallMag and the Gleaner, Hibbert said it is a song about revenge in the form of karma, and that the title was what he said when someone wronged him: the pressure is going to drop on you. He also said it has been covered by everyone from the Specials to the Clash.

The Clash recorded it in 1978 and issued it as the B-side of "English Civil War" on February 23, 1979; Robert Palmer made it the title track of his 1975 album, and Keith Richards, Izzy Stradlin and the Oppressed have recorded it. Rolling Stone ranked it 453 on its 2004 list of 500 greatest songs, and the BPI certified it silver in August 2024. It appeared in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and in a 2020 Coors Light advertisement. Setlist.fm counts 111 setlists with it, their most-played song, ahead of "54-46" (104). The group also cut "Pressure Drop '72", an acoustic version for the 2012 Unplugged on Strawberry Hill, and a re-recording on The Golden Tracks (2011). We cannot say which version our upload carries.