The album starts with Sugar's own "Si Mi Ya," a light tune with sparse drums and horns subtlely punctuated by a simple bassline. Sugar reminisces of his past: "Some say mi look like mi old grandpa, / When him sit down and a burn him cigar, / Him would a tell mi about the days gone by, / And how him would work and no get no pay, / That was the time of slavery days."
Next up is Barrington Levy's "Jah Black." As you'd expect, Mr. Cool and Deadly is in top form with his trademark style similar to much of his mid-80's output (it sounds like it would have fit perfectly on the same album as "Here I Come" and "Under Mi Sensi"). Horace Andy follows close behind with the uplifiting "Ain't No Sunshine."
Nitty Gritty's "Cross the Border" is a solid track on which Gritty doesn't sound as similar to Tenor Saw as he did on other tracks of the period. Tenor Saw's contribution, "African Children," is one of the most memorable tracks on this release. Though Tenor's life was cut tragically short, as is the case with too many reggae artists, we have tracks to remember him by like "Ring the Alarm" and "African Children," which also surfaced about five years ago on the double-billed Tenor Saw/Nitty Gritty disc With Lots of Sign on the Black Roots/Jet Star label.
Another young artist who met a tragically early demise was Garnett Silk, who appears with "No Disrespect," a more standard dancehall style tune than fans of his later work might be used to. It's an interesting listen since he had a noticably higher pitch (though it's not as dramatic as his Bimbo days) and was just beginning to develop his own sound.
Junior Reid's "What They Say" is other wonderfully representative piece of the artist's output at the time. This, presumably, came from Reid's "Boom Shack A Tack" era, which had Reid well settled into his own style before his tenure with the post-Michael Rose Black Uhuru. Definitely a nice listen for fans of this Waterhouse legend.
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