Mind Control

Well March 20th is almost here. After approximately seven release postponements dating back to April of 2005, Stephen Marley's "Mind Control" (formerly titled "Got Music") hits record stores. For those of us that live beyond dancehall and truly crave real quality Caribbean music this has been a long wait. In fact in popular music circles period it is one of the most anticipated releases of 2007. He was the main force behind Damian's "Jamrock" album of 2005 (producing, writing, singing). He has done a lot of successful writing and producing over the past ten tears, but now it it his turn to take the spotlight. He has obviously been quite reluctant to play this role but I suppose he has finally run out of excuses to postpone the inevitable.
Anybody familiar with the music careers of these second generation Marleys will tell you that Stephen is the true heir to his father's throne. By far he is the most talented of the lot. But that has not phased him, his productions go well beyond Reggae. This CD is heavily influenced by hip-hop beats, though it remains quite mellow throughout. Except for "Traffic Jam" and a few other tracks it is very laid back. The last five tracks are my favourites, especially "Fed Up" and "Inna De Red". Keep in mind there are only two real reggae tracks on this CD, (well three if you count Traffic Jam as Reggae). Overall I would give it 4 out of 5, with CDs like Tanya Stephens "Rebelution" and Jr Gong's "Jamrock" getting a full 5, and Tami Chynn's "Out Of Many One" getting a 3 out of 5. My two disappointments with this disc are that there is not enough REAL reggae, and there are only thirteen tracks (really 12 if you exclude the 14 second "Officer Jimmy" interlude). After working on this for THREE years surely he could have included more than just 13 songs.
The full CD (minus the 2 bonus tracks) can be sampled on his MySpace page, but that does not do it justice as that is REAL LOW fidelity sound. It is definitely worth buying so go out and get it next week nuh?