Random A-List for Set: Jamaica

Artists from Jamaica and reggae-identified artists worldwide.

Here are 12 A-list albums, selected at random from Set: Jamaica. Use your Reload button to get more.

Dancehall 101, Vol. 1 [2000, VP]
Speaking as a not quite total stranger, unimbued with electroskank riddims and incapable of understanding more than half of the nominally English-language leerics, I know of no more fun way to access Jamaica's answer to hip-hop, disco, house, techno, and Blowfly than this historical compilation. From Red Dragon's "pop [??] your vagina" to Beenie Man's "keys to my Beemer," from Yellowman's zungaing keyb-as-guitar to Cutty Ranks's deep-jingle organ-grind, this connects as timeless novelty music, lively and dirty and knowing no shame. As a style, not to mention an industry, of course its repetitive hooks are recycled endlessly. Here's where they started--or were especially well imitated, I don't know. The secret is that it doesn't make much difference. A-

Dancehall Stylee: The Best of Reggae Dancehall Music Vol. 1 [1990, Profile]
As disco habitués learn to perceive its marginal distinctions, tolerate its generic repetitions, and crave its pulse, the style becomes less accessible to simple curiosity-seekers like yours truly. I'm sure every song on this assiduous compilation was a special favorite in context, and appreciate all the little touches--the late-breaking piano hook on "This Feeling Inside," the lilting Sunday School promise of "Prophecy," the multiple interjections of "Nah Go Switch," the aggressively incredulous "Wha-at"s of "Bun and Cheese" and then "Life," the squeaky echo of "Life." But even at that the closing "Watch a Them" and for that matter "Nah Go Switch" seem too damn marginal in their distinction. But excepting three or four--Tiger's "Ram Dance Hall" (he roars), Gregory Peck's "Oversized Mumpie" (blue patois), and Derrick Parker's "Cool It Off" (sounds like "coup d'etat"), with Shelly Thunder's "Kuff" a dark horse--I still could stand some more big touches. A-

Gregory Isaacs: My Number One [1990, Heartbeat]
Isaacs has got to be the sameyest great artist in pop history--though I own only four of these 13 tracks from his big youth on Alvin Ranglin's GG label, two of them on a tape I haven't played since I got it, just about every tune sounded like an old friend after a brief, casual interchange, because just about every one has been sending its cousins by for years. Coolly crooning lyrics that declare for self-determination up against romance or oppression, caressing and suffering with equal imperturbability, Isaacs is the aural image of an unconquerable, ganja-guzzling serenity. With ace toasters pitching in on four de facto disco discs, this is the U.S. release that will convince doubters until he gets the boxed set he deserves. A-

Linton Kwesi Johnson: Making History [1984, Island]
For a while I thought the light-handed fills, tricky horn parts, and swinging rhythms went against the artist's hard-hitting message, not to mention my own hard-hitting tastes. Only after seeing him live did I recognize those embellishments for what they were--hooks. Dennis Bovell's arrangements take the natural lilt of LKJ's self-conscious patois to a new level of musicality. He may not be quite the man of the people he wants to be, but he comes a damn sight closer than most leftists (not to mention most semipopular musicians), which is why he puts so much care into the pleasure of his propaganda. And he's as smart as anyone could want to be, which is why he puts so much care into his analysis. A

Lee "Scratch" Perry: Rainford [2019, On-U Sound]
Riddled with reissues, collaborations, bootlegs, remixes, and of course dubs, the Upsetter's catalogue is beyond comprehension. Post 2011, when he turned 75, Wikipedia lists 13 albums while omitting more titles than I'm mad enough to compare-and-contrast from Spotify's offerings; upsetter.net credits 30 undated albums to "Lee Perry" and 12 more to "Lee Perry &"; etc. But if you care about the greatest of the dubmasters, this project, overseen for the 84-year-old by great white dubmaster Adrian Sherwood, is an album that holds together. Is there a single track as head-turning as, to name a few personal faves, "I Am a Psychiatrist," "Messy Appartment," or "Poop Song"? Definitely the "Autobiography of the Upsetter" finale, possibly the "Cricket on the Moon" opener, but in the end it doesn't matter, because all nine tracks achieve both solidity and differentiation--sound good without sounding too much like any of the others. Take a wild guess and thank Sherwood, whose 1983 African Head Charge release Drastic Season has won my ears and heart as I've done my due diligence. I'll never know where this album stands or sprawls in Perry's oeuvre, But I do know that it will now replace 2004's Panic in Babylon as my go-to Upsetter. A-

Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus: Rally Round [1985, Shanachie]
Lifelong Rastafarian Michael Henry does Jah's work by reclaiming pop music for the folk, slipping a line from Wilson Pickett here and Bob Marley there into hymns and chants whose elemental melodies invoke the most high on rivers of funde drums. Not that the beat is more sinuous than mainstream reggae. If anything it's more direct--Michael is a primitivist's primitivist, and thus he overpowers reggae's all-sounds-the-same dilemma. Some feel that this brightened and clarified compilation foreshortens his hypnotic scope. I say it renders him suitable for outside consumption. A-

Steel Pulse: Reggae Fever [1980, Mango]
Geoffrey Chung's crystalline production, David Hinds's catchy melodies, and Selwyn Brown's straight-ahead vocals may offend those infatuated with reggae's steamy aura of ambiguity: once you get used to the abrasion of their English Jamaican, you notice that neither bass lines nor lead vocals have the tropical thickness of Jamaican Jamaican. Roots, culture, the presence of Jah--who can gainsay them? But over Rastafarianism's deep quietism I'll take the aggressive ideological edge of Hinds's politico-inspirational mode. Also the aggressive pop edge of his romantic mode. And attribute both to urban industrialism, thank you. A-

Bunny Wailer: Hook, Line and Sinker [1982, Solomonic]
The skanking Memphisbeat Sly & Robbie rolled out for Joe Cocker goes uptempo and downriver here, and Bunny rides it for the entirety of a delightful groove album. Imagine what a reggae-goes-Stax-Volt-second-line tune called "Soul Rocking Party" might sound like. No no no--imagine it done well. Now you've got it. A-

Delroy Wilson: The Best of Delroy Wilson [1991, Heartbeat]
These dozen ditties, quavered over about that many years atop a modest Coxsone Dodd groove that remained skalike well after ska was passe, are all I know of this much recorded, often cited, rarely described originator, whose first hit came in 1964, when he was 12; augmented slightly by two sweet dubs, they're the same dozen briefly available years ago from United Artists' Anthology of Reggae series. Rarely has pop music sounded more underdeveloped--between the scrawny horn arrangements and Wilson's uncertain pursuit of his simple tunes, it remains sweetly tentative whether he's fledgling or legend, naming his pain or pledging his eternal devotion. A-

Yabby You: Fleeing from the City [1985, Shanachie]
Shanachie's 1983 collection of the "greatest works" of this crippled country man and religious recluse, whose unkiltered voice and gentle faith are eccentric even by Jamaican standards, proved him a gifted arranger of millenarian ditties. It also inspired him to record for the first time since 1977. Remarkably, he just got better during his long, impoverished layoff: without sacrificing roots harmonies or compact tunes, this music leaves room for embellishment and comment. What was once eccentric now sounds almost strong. A-

Tapper Zukie: Man Ah Warrior [1978, Mer]
Dub has certain affinities with heavy metal, which may be why the only album of the stuff I've ever played much is Big Youth's first, Screaming Target, now five years old and never released in the States. Ace discophile Lenny Kaye has compiled this set from the same period, which means that the mix is less volcanic than in recent dub, the vocals more buoyant. Zukie's is fresh enough to really enjoy putting a rap down, too, so he doesn't sound doombound, verbally or musically. Sample segue: from "Simpleton Badness" to "Archie the Rednose Reindeer." A-