Perfect - Born Dead With Life

This is the dancehall album that i have been waiting for

it combines a live style with roots riddims and has a sound that runs deep. It isn't just hip hop beats with Jamaican accents, it isn't hateful and empty lyrics, it isn't a shotta's gospel; all these things have been called dancehall, but this album is it.

There is quite a variety of styles on this album but the diversions are not throw away tracks and the riddims are rootsy and bouncing throughout. A few tracks have more of a festival feel than a studio album; on "Hanging Day" when perfect shouts "I was awakened" - "by a whiplash" I can see him on stage jerking the mic and stomping his foot. "Unforgivable" sounds like a Sunday morning sing along and the next track "Rasta Dublate", a slow beat dancehall throwback, is opened with a massive crew introduction. This unusual pair is followed up by an unashamed Ska track "Unlock", complete with doo-wop backup singers and a horn driven rhythm. Despite the diversity of style this is an album that I can't stop listening to straight through.

The words of Marcus Garvey run through the whole album, not just in the interstitial excerpts from his speeches, but in the lyrical emphasis on black history. In a style similar to Burning Spear perfect recounts stories of slavery and black oppression from his own perspective in songs like "Hanging Day", "This City", and "Unlock"

Perfect is joined on the album by Empress, Gyptian, Turbulence, and Chezidek. These guests add to the album but the great selection of riddims and the obvious influence of the old dancehall greats is responsible for making this release a stand out album. The music video for "Rasta Dubplate" is a must see; it begins with Perfect siting down for bones with the originator himself, U-Roy, and then interlaces a goofy looking and goofy dancing Perfect with home footage of sound systems and selectas of old.

Perfect puts the roots and the love back into Dancehall.