Born in Kingston, Lloyd Lovindeer spent some of his childhood in Ewarton in St Catherine. He attended Kingston College and on leaving formed The Fabulous Flames with friends, the group releasing their first single, “Holly Holy”, in 1971. The group split up in the mid-1970s and Lovindeer began a solo career while living in Canada between 1976 and 1982.
He returned to Jamaica and had hits in the 1980s with “Babylon Boops” (a response to Super Cat‘s “Boops”), “Don’t Bend Down”, and “Man Shortage”, before having the biggest hit of his career with “Wild Gilbert”. Released in September 1988, “Wild Gilbert” humorously describes the experiences of Jamaica during 1988’s Hurricane Gilbert and remains the island’s biggest selling single with sales estimated at between 50,000 and 200,000 copies. The song also appeared on his album Why Don’t We All Have Sex, which included another Gilbert-themed track, “Gilbert – One Hell of a Blow-Job”, and the hurricane theme continued on his 1989 album Gilbert Yu Gone. He followed it with hits such as “Pocomonia Day”, which along with the 1989 album One Day Christian triggered a spate of “Poco style” releases based on rhythms from Pukumina religious songs.
