World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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Fatis Burrell

Producer. Dancehall, reggae, roots

Active
1984-2011
Sunrise
July 23, 1954
Sunset
December 3, 2011, Kingston
Also known as
Fatis, Fattis, Phillip Burrell, Philip Burrell, Phillip "Fatis" Burrell, Xterminator, Exterminator, Vena, Kings & Lions

Fatis Burrell (Phillip Burrell) was the producer behind the Xterminator label and sound system, and the man most often credited with the "Rasta renaissance" of the mid-1990s, when Luciano, Sizzla and their label-mates brought cultural themes back to the center of the dancehall.

He spent his childhood in Birmingham, England, and came back to Kingston as a teenager. He started in 1984, releasing a couple of Sugar Minott tunes on his Kings and Lions label; his first sides, cut at Channel One, also included Michael Palmer, Tenor Saw and Wayne Wade. His Vena label followed in the mid-1980s, with Sly and Robbie's Taxi riddims behind Frankie Paul's "Hungry Belly" and "Warning," and the early records of Pinchers, Sanchez and Thriller U; Pinchers's "Lift It Up Again" was a large local hit in 1987. As the Rough Guide has it, Sly and Robbie gave him the first hits for "one of the most successful producers of the forthcoming digital era."

The Exterminator label carried Capleton's earliest singles, Ini Kamoze's run of strong records, and veterans including Josey Wales, Cocoa Tea, Frankie Paul and Ninjaman. By 1993, when the spelling changed to Xterminator, the saxophonist Dean Fraser was his arranger. Burrell built his riddims with Sly Dunbar and the Firehouse Crew, and he used seasoned players, among them Robbie Lyn and Cat Coore, to give hard dancehall riddims real depth; as Luciano told Bradley, "Fatis went back to pick older musicians." Cocoa Tea's "Good Life" and Beres Hammond's "Full Attention" came from these sessions. Then came Luciano, whose Where There Is Life (1995), with "It's Me Again Jah" and "Lord Give Me Strength," was issued through Island Jamaica, and Sizzla, with more than forty-five singles on Xterminator alone. He also recorded Marcia Griffiths, Freddie McGregor, Sugar Minott, Fred Locks, Mikey General, Jah Cure and Lady G. Luciano and Mikey General left at the end of 1998.

Dean Fraser remembered a producer who "loved to experiment," with a broad ear shaped by Motown and Stevie Wonder; John Masouri called him "the last of the great Jamaican record producers," with an "instantly recognizable sound." Bradley found him in a house in the hills above Kingston run like a Rastafari camp, with a communal pot and blessings before meals. The Xterminator sound system was, he was told, the first big set to use a CD player, and Burrell's Spanish-language productions were selling in South America. He departed at the University Hospital of the West Indies at fifty-seven, two weeks after a stroke; he had been building his own studio in Stony Hill, and his son Kareem had joined him in production.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. David Katz, "Philip 'Fatis' Burrell Obituary," The Guardian, December 6, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/dec/06/philip-fatis-burrell. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 531-32.
  2. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 362. Katz says he was born in Whitfield Town, Kingston, and moved to the West Midlands at five. Katz, "Philip 'Fatis' Burrell Obituary."
  3. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 362; Katz, "Philip 'Fatis' Burrell Obituary."
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 280-81, 362; Katz, "Philip 'Fatis' Burrell Obituary." The Rough Guide dates Vena to 1986 in one place and to 1987 in another; Katz says 1985.
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 279.
  6. Katz, "Philip 'Fatis' Burrell Obituary." Wikipedia, citing Colin Larkin, says Exterminator was founded by 1989. "Philip \"Fatis\" Burrell," Wikipedia, accessed October 7, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_%22Fatis%22_Burrell.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 362; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 532, 536. Katz, "Philip 'Fatis' Burrell Obituary." The Rough Guide dates Fraser's first instrumental 45s for him to 1992.
  8. Howard Campbell, "The 'Fattis' Legacy: Reflections on the Work of a Maestro," Jamaica Observer, December 9, 2011, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2011/12/08/the-fattis-legacy-reflections-on-the-work-of-a-maestro/.
  9. Campbell, "The 'Fattis' Legacy." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 342, 356, 362.
  10. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 362. Katz says Fraser and the Firehouse Crew left with Luciano.
  11. Howard Campbell, "The Fattis Legacy: Reflections on the Work of a Maestro," Jamaica Observer, December 8, 2011, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2011/12/08/the-fattis-legacy-reflections-on-the-work-of-a-maestro/; Steve James, "Tribute to Fattis Burrell," United Reggae, December 9, 2011, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n823/120911/tribute-to-fattis-burrell.
  12. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 531-32.
  13. Katz, "Philip 'Fatis' Burrell Obituary." Campbell, "The 'Fattis' Legacy." Wikipedia, citing a Jamaica Observer report of December 4, 2011, adds that a blood clot near his lungs worsened his condition; it also reports that his wife gave the cause as a heart attack. "Philip \"Fatis\" Burrell."

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