Malik Peay
Malik Peay
With their latest track, “Ballerina” featuring Rema and Skillibeng, Silent Addy and Disco Neil aren’t just setting foot towards an Afrobeats takeover — they are leading a movement.
Credit: Miklas Manneke
Dancehall duo Silent Addy and Disco Neil have earned their stripes. The producer pair has worked with gargantuan artists of Africa and the Caribbean. Rema, Skillibeng, Wizkid, Vybz Kartel, and their biggest release yet — “Shake It To The Max” with MOLIY — garnered virality and turned into a global smash with their 2025 remix with Shenseea and Skillibeng.
“I definitely feel like you have an eye,” Jamaican-born producer Disco Neil says, defining how he knows when he is making a song that is undoubtedly a dance anthem.
“We've been around music so long that when you're in the studio, you just have an idea, you feel something you never really know until it's out there in the world but as a producer, you definitely have a good vibe, a good energy that this could be something crazy.”
Silent Addy is sitting in another room next to Disco Neil at a scenic beachside home in Jamaica. The producers are preparing to mix new music together while listening to voice demos from other famed African artists. “We're about to eat some oxtail for dinner,” Addy chimes in from the back with a voice filled with excitement.
Riddim-inflected Afrobeats and the influence of dancehall music is what keeps metropolitan locals of African countries and Caribbean destinations going out after midnight and coming home past midnight. “[The Caribbean and Africa] is a good market,” Disco Neil prefaces. “[There is] a good display of what is doing well rhythmically and there is a pulse that is going on.”
Silent Addy follows up Neil’s sentiment: “African music is definitely rhythm-driven. People from any culture can feel immediately while it's playing. ‘Shake It To The Max’ was a global record that didn't really need any translation.”
When listening to Addy and Neil’s joint discographies, lyrical mantras can be heard throughout and addictive, earworm phrases make up most of their legendary tracks. Their recent 2026 release with Rema, “Ballerina,” dials up the drama and capitalizes off of a clever coupling of words: “‘Pon your toe like ballerina.”
Oftentimes, the pair partners up with fellow African artists and request their voice to conjure up a cultural riddim that would compliment the track.
“We'll find one artist that we think is good for [a demo],” Neil explains. “They'll add their voice and then we'll kind of sit with that. Our vibe is really about bringing different parts of the world together. Then, we think on who else could bring value or spread the music to a different part of the world.”
The ingredients to crafting an Afrobeats anthem is by going to every corner of the world to discover music that needs to be spotlighted. Similar to how Disco Neil and Silent Addy added Skilibeng and Shensea to “Shake It To The Max,” they, unknowingly, created a global formula that thrives on culture and story to deliver a sensation of a dance song.
Their recent joint venture Bashment Sound is a multidisciplinary creative studio where the producers are able to amplify the voices and sonics of their international community.
“Dancehall has always influenced the world,” Silent Addy adds. “It always gets recognition, but in waves. We are currently in one of those moments where people are [realizing] dancehall is amazing. A bunch of things happened that year to really bring dancehall back to the forefront. Dancehall always has been global. If people are just realizing it now, they are the next wave of people, you know?”
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