BRITISH MUSICIAN Trevor Beresford Romeo, better known as Jazzie B and the brain behind funk band Soul II Soul, has acknowledged his reggae influences on his latest project, Presents Schooldays.

The 18-track album was released yesterday in the United Kingdom by Trojan Records.

Jazzie B puts a funk/hip-hop spin on dance monsters like Gregory Isaacs' Slave Master and Tenor Saw's Ring The Alarm, songs he says he played on his Jah Rico sound system in London clubs during the 1980s.

"(This is) an all-reggae set that still has the depths and changes of pace of a regular set, but all comes back to the same, happy uplifting mood," Jazzie B told British media. "Every cut on here is a guaranteed killer."

Several of the songs covered on Schooldays made British ethnic charts during the 1970s and 1980s when reggae was a force among Caribbean immigrants and first-generation black Britons.

Songs in this batch include Natty Dread a Weh She Want by Horace Andy and Tappa Zukie; Warrior (Junior Delgado); Love Has Found Its Way (Dennis Brown); and Shine Eye Girl, done by Barrington Levy and Jah Thomas.

International charts

Each of the songs on Schooldays was distributed in the UK by Trojan Records, a leading source of Jamaican music in Europe for over 20 years.

Jazzie B, whose parents are from the Caribbean, made international charts with Soul II Soul in 1989. The quintet hit pay dirt with the funk songs Keep on Movin' and Back to Life.