Joe90 wrote:
There is definitely a bit of reggae in those tracks, you're right. I have not heard those tracks before. I stand corrected with regards to these examples being reggae. Not ska, though. Ska is kind of like reggae at double speed...sort of. Where reggae usually has two accentations per measure (such as heard, for example, indeed in the tracks you linked), ska tends to have four, and a more upbeat feel.
No need to feel stupid, sir. There's nothing stupid about being in a position of learning new things. I just learned that Sean Paul has done some pop reggae, for example, having only heard him do pop dancehall/ragga before, which most of his stuff seems to be. And even that is very commonly misidentified as reggae by a lot of people. It's not uncommon to identify all Jamaican music styles as reggae by default, since a lot of it is related. Roots reggae, pop reggae, rocksteady, dub and ragga are all derived from ska. It's kind of like how people commonly refer to apes as monkeys, even though they're different subcategories of primate. Related things often get mixed up, and there's no shame or stupidity in it. Hell, I can't count how many times singers have been misidentified as rappers by media just because of how they dress.