Wet Dream by Max Romeo (1968)

Wet Dream is the record the phrase rude reggae was coined for: a 1968 rocksteady single from a young Jamaican singer, built on one chorus that leaves nothing to the imagination and a title that confirms it in case the chorus was too subtle. The verses are brief, the rhythm is sweet, and the whole thing is over before the implications are, which is at least thematically consistent.

The BBC played Wet Dream twice before someone in the building looked up what a wet dream was, at which point the corporation banned a song about home repairs. Britain responded by buying more than 250,000 copies and sending it to number ten in 1969, making it the most successful roofing record in British history. Romeo's account, a leaky roof and a zinc sheet in need of "pushing up", remains the finest piece of damage control reggae has produced, and by his own later admission he did not believe it either.

Its afterlife is a conversion. The man who sang Wet Dream became the roots conscience of the 1970's, recording War ina Babylon and Chase the Devil with Lee Perry, which means the same voice is responsible for one of reggae's rudest records and one of its most righteous, a career arc usually reserved for saints. The ban-then-hit pattern he stumbled into became a business plan for Judge Dread.