"Serious Times" (XL)
By Ben Taylor
Thursday. Dec 21, 12:12 AM
A fine and dandy mix of contemporary conscious reggae.

I’ll just say it up front, for the record: I’m out of the loop about current Black popular music. I love classic reggae, soul, Public Enemy, and the first couple A Tribe Called Quest albums, but my knowledge of hip-hop stops cold around 1994 (pre-Wu Tang, pre-The Chronic), and I was never on board the reggae train for dancehall. I wouldn’t know reggaeton if it was blaring at me in the face. After discovering Bob Marley and Peter Tosh in high school, I checked out some dancehall in the mid-‘90s, with all the gun shot sound FX, deep bullfrog voice toasting, and tinny drum machines (oh yeah, don’t forget the rampant homophobia!), and promptly looked elsewhere for my musical needs. I’ll freely admit that any of the post-‘70s dub I enjoy is just undanceable art music made by weird White people (Adrian Sherwood and Bill Laswell, throw your hands in the air!).

That being said, several people recommended Serious Times to me, knowing that I like reggae. An ethnomusicology grad student friend (who studies the music of the African Diaspora, how hip-hop and reggae collide with each other and other cultures’ musical traditions) explained that it’s a compilation of recent dancehall tracks, reflecting an ongoing trend of rootsiness in Jamaican popular music. Not exactly a return to the golden years of Burning Spear and The Wailers, but there’s plenty here to like, especially for people alienated by the grating synthetic island sounds of the last decade or so.

I guess I tuned out on contemporary hip-hop and reggae because it stopped being something I could relate to. Sure, as a suburban-bred white dude, roots reggae’s tales of suffering and liberation weren’t exactly speaking to me, but it definitely dealt heavily in three of my favorite things: ganja, bass, and ganja. No wait, harmony singing. Dancehall just wasn’t pleasing to my ears, and gangsta rap rubbed me wrong in the same way. As much as I’m not a fan of being held down by The Man, I was never much for shooting people, dealing drugs, or smacking bitches around. And the fucking whiny synths and played-out samples were just the shit-flavored icing on the cake.

Any way, where was I? Oh right, ganja. And bass and harmony singing. Or at least melodic singing. That’s what Serious Times is celebrating the return of. The tunes collected here (as a DJ mix on disc one [complete with air horns and sound system rewinds] and as the individual singles on disc two) are a grab bag of hip-hop and R&B-influenced contemporary reggae, from Jamaica and the Caribbean communities of Brooklyn. Maybe it’s just that good sounding digital sound tools are available to producers now (no more cheap-o drum machines and crappy synths), but these tracks are remarkably warm sounding. But it wouldn’t matter if the tunes weren’t any good, if the artists couldn’t sing. No one’s coasting on toasting here.

I could go on and on here, and it would only further highlight my ignorance. So I’ll keep it brief from here on out. There are some great tracks here, with tons of great grooves and melodies. The exceptions being Norris Man’s “Home & Away” (boasting some atrocious baby-making crooning and Muzak soprano sax) and Sizzla’s “Ain’t Gonna Fall” (sounding suspiciously like that ‘90s reggae cover of “Baby, I Love Your Way,” and also some sporting some cringe-inducing soprano sax). But there are more than balanced out by Morgan Heritage’s ebullient “Wall of Babylon” and Perfect’s toasty “Hand Cart Boy.” There’s some downtempo blunted exclamations on Jah Mason & Simpleman’s “Rolling” (about, wait for it… smoking weed), and the acoustic folk-fuelled “Ghetto” by Nitty Kutchie provides a nice contrast to some of the more electronic numbers. Fat bass lines and ghostly background vocals dominate throughout the disc, and it all envelopes you in a warm blanket of melody and rhythm.

This disc should appeal to a lot of people, whether they’re reggae fans or newcomers. As someone who’s knowledge of Jamaican music stopped about two decades ago, it was refreshing to find that there’s still vibrant music being made in Kingston, keeping some elements I liked and working in more recent R&B innovations into a unique and coherent whole. And the constant dancehall air horn blasts and DJ shout outs keep the focus on the party, so don’t get lost in your bong-addled thoughts.
www.xlrecordings.com

Ben Taylor

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