OVERCOMES AFFLICTION : YELLOWMAN RIPPIN’ ‘N’ RAPPIN’ AGAIN

In a bit of irony, the Jamaican singer who rode to popularity on a rapid-fire, rap-related vocal style has just weathered a bout with a serious affliction of the jaw.

Just how serious depends on whom you listen to. Yellowman’s record company, Shanachie, says in the bio that accompanies his new “Going to the Chapel” album that he underwent surgery for cancer of the jaw. Yellowman himself has a slightly different medical report.

“I didn’t have any cancer, but I did have an abscess in my jaw,” said the singer, part of the Taxi Connection reggae tour scheduled for the Coach House tonight and the Universal Amphitheatre on Friday.

“They took it out and it damaged a part of the jawbone. It was kind of frightening but I just give thanks and praise to the Lord, and the doctor said it didn’t damage my vocal cords. Everything is OK now.”

Medical problems aside, everything is better than OK for Yellowman. The 28-year-old singer/deejay has been the biggest phenomenon in Jamaican music this decade--a hugely popular artist and an unlikely sex symbol since starting his recording career in 1981.

Born Winston Foster, Yellowman lived through a childhood marked by alienation caused by growing up as an albino in a largely black society. He had early aspirations to a singing career, but picked up his earliest performing experience as a deejay at Jamaican sound system (mobile disco) dances during the mid-’70s.

By the end of the decade, he had formulated a distinctive style that combined the fast patter of the deejay style with occasional snatches of straight singing that often incorporated verses of popular songs.

“I don’t really write songs--I collect phrases,” Yellowman said. “I always have a different idea in music, so it’s never too difficult to come up with new things. From coming up in the sound systems I have that idea, to pick out a little lyric by Gladys Knight or Teddy Pendergrass or Sam Cooke and put it into reggae so people can be familiar with it.”

Yellowman became an instant hit following his “Soldier Take Over” hit five years ago, and he expanded that popularity with an extraordinarily prolific output. He reportedly released nearly 20 albums and 50 singles in the first year of his career. Yellowman said he’s issued about 40 albums in Jamaica during his career.

A more controversial factor in his popularity was the so-called “slackness” of much of his material. Many of Yellowman’s most popular songs are bawdy celebrations of his sexual prowess that transformed the albino outcast into a major sex symbol. But it also rubbed many who loved reggae for its uplifting social and spiritual message the wrong way.

Said Yellowman, “I got a lot of criticism in my type of music, but it didn’t trouble me. I still move in the same track. That’s the way I have to stay, no changes.”

Yellowman’s Jamaican popularity was so widespread he became one of the few younger reggae artists to get a major American label. Columbia released the “King Yellowman” album in 1984, but the mixture of his reggae deejay style with rap-style American funk failed to become a crossover success. Still, Yellowman did record with such prominent rappers as Afrika Bambaataa and Run-D.M.C.

With the health problems that knocked him out of action for a year now under control, Yellowman is primed to immerse himself again in the recording and performing arenas.

“I love entertainment,” he said. “I don’t really get into it for the money. If there’s even 10 people that come to my show, I give them the same, usual act as I would perform where 10,000 are in front of me, or 35,000.”