Angående Sizzla och Roc-A-Fella

Angående Sizzla och Roc-A-Fella

Sizzla Signs To Dame Dash Label

Just received this press release, re: Sizzla. Old "New Roots" fan that I am (and I am still hoping for an Ini Kamoze comeback--80s version!), I feel like he's about 6 or 7 years off his peak. At this point he's like Prince in the 90s. Lots of output, not a lot of killers.

Diversion: I loved Da Real Thing but it was only 80% of a perfect album. Remember 1997? Black Woman & Child and Praise Ye Jah. That's like putting out Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint in the same year.

All this said, "Be Strong" was probably the best "Drop Leaf" 7", and Sizzla's been playing with hip-hop crossover for about 4 years now (mostly unmemorably). There's a lot of ways that this marriage makes perfect sense. The main thing will be to pair him with a producer who can inspire and--mainly--edit.

Maybe give Don Corleon the job, and tell him not to come back until he has 12 certifiable bangers. Even if that means spending more than two weeks to actually do an album.

Thing is, general North American audiences won't be as forgiving as we reggae fans are. We'll buy every 1 of the 16 Sizzla albums every year, hoping to get maybe 3-5 good tracks. These fools will download the shit with Foxy Brown for free and be like, who's that Jamaican dude and what's he yo-oh-yoing about?

Overall, I haven't had a chance to listen or write about dancehall as much as I would have liked to for the past 2 years, but I'm convinced that this year is going to be a really interesting one. As Buju would say, here why:

-Soca no-names and non-Jamaican neo-dancehall divas are burning up the summer charts.
-You can now hear reggaeton playing in a Mill Valley Baskin & Robbins.

If you count the Caribbean influence on grime and crunk--that latter thing is a debate I'm dying to fire up, but not here--dancehall has conquered hip-hop in death by a thousand hybrids. And yet dancehall artists still might not win. Again, here why:

-Sean Paul's followup appears to be stalled.
-Baby Cham's album is still not scheduled.
-Ele and Vybz never caught flight.
-Beenie Man is missing in Aruba.

The question is: did our dancehall heroes do it to themselves, or is everyone else just moving a lot faster?

And now everyone is supposedly talking about roots again. But forgive me, because this is my sound, but I gotta say this: I Wayne is not the real thing, Jah Cure can't tour for another decade, the Marleys (even those whose mother is not named Rita) always get a free pass from foreign, and all of these dudes have women problems. How long will this last?

More questions for a hot summer day.

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