Rude boy, rudie, rudi or rudy is a subculture that developed in the early 1960s on Jamaica and has close ties to skinhead culture.
The rude boy culture originated in the ghettos of Kingston, where disaffected, unemployed youth started wearing sharp suits and pork-pie hats in an imitation of the upper class. Most rude boys were armed and organised in gangs, and violence was an integral part of rude boy lifestyle.
With growing emigration in the late 1960s, the rude boy culture and its music, ska/rocksteady, spread to England and from there to most other western countries. It has had considerable influence on early skinhead culture.
The name Rudy often appears in ska/rocksteady and punk lyrics as an allusion to the rude boy subculture. Two of the more famous of these are the songs "Rudie Can't Fail" by The Clash and "Rudi, A Message To You" by The Specials (originally by Dandy Livingstone).
Rude Boy (Movie)
starring: Ray Gange screenplay by: David Mingay, Ray Gange and Jack Hazan music by: Joe Strummer and Mick Jones produced and directed by: Jack Hazan and David Mingay
Rude Boy is also the name of a 1980 movie about a roadie for the punk band The Clash. The movie was named for the subculture.
Accused of causing trouble simply for the sake of it, to many the RudeBoys were heroes on a level with the mythical cowboy and gangster figures who blasted their way through the films that they loved and viewed in a near participatory manner.
James Bond was seen as the ultimate archetypal RudeBoy and '007 (Shanty Town)', a litany of all things Rude from Desmond Dekker and The Aces, carried the cult to the rest of the world in a crossover smash hit in 1967 that is probably the most enduring record of the genre.
The RudeBoys had pointed the way forward through their extremes of behaviour (remember that yesterday's terrorist rapidly becomes looked upon as today's freedom fighter) and their militancy was to form the core of Jamaican musical attitude from now on in.
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