Buju Banton: Til' Shiloh

Buju Banton: Til' Shiloh

1995

Island Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Shiloh  2. 'Til I'm Laid to Rest  3. Murderer  4. Champion  5. Untold Stories  6. Not an Easy Road  7. Only Man  8. Complaint  9. Chuck It So  10. How Could You  11. Wanna Be Loved  12. It's All Over  13. Hush, Baby, Hush  14. What Ya Gonna Do?  15. Rampage  16. Sensemilia Persecution  17. Champion (Remix)

Hot shit, this is a good album...If you're into Jamaican music, this is a must-have...If there's a greater dancehall artist out there I don't know of him and if he's made a record better than "Til' Shiloh" I haven't heard it...Let me put it this way...It's better than his greatest hits album...



On this record Buju infuses his signature dancehall style with a heaping does of roots reggae and pop...Every song has a killer chorus and Buju doesn't sing so much as roar like the Lion of Judah...

 After the quiet, hymn-like title track opens the album, "'Til I'm Laid to Rest" comes on  and Buju sings of his spiritual homeland with a righteous, guttural voice that moves mountains (See, there used to be this mountain range smack dab in the middle of Kingston , but Buju yelled at it and it moved to the Ozarks...)

(P.S. this photo is probably not of the Ozarks...)

If you check out Buju's pre "Voice of Jamaica" music (the record before this one) you'll find a radically different character...



Sure his commanding voice was always there, but lyrically he  was preoccupied with guns, sex and violence...Very much in the vein of American 90's hardcore  rap...Hell, to this day he's probably most famous for his ridiculously homophobic track "Boom Bye Bye." But here the lyrics are mostly devoted to love, spirituality, social commentary and most surprisingly on the excellent single "Murderer," non-violence...And the music also shifts from the standard electro-dancehall backing and into the realm of live instruments...

As much as I enjoy dancehall, I tend to think of it as a genre better suited to singles...Generally speaking,  albums in the genre tend to sound a bit homogenous and I  often find myself getting  tired of dancehall albums pretty quickly, so I think the wide variety of music on "Til' Shiloh" really sets it apart from the rest of the pack..There's the usual hard rhythms ("Chuck It So," "Champion") but there's also nice touches like the acoustic guitar on album highlight "Untold Stories," the African feel of "'Til I'm Laid to Rest," or the slick soul on "Complaint" (a duet with the late Garnett Silk (who just about has the smoothest voice I've ever heard...))

(I've never heard "Silky Mood," but just looking at the album cover makes me want to wear a robe and smoke a calabash pipe...)

  60's ska and 70's reggae tends to cast such a large shadow on Jamaican music,  it's very hard to move beyond that era, but Buju Banton helped me make that transition, so if you've played Bob Marley's "Legend" one too many times and are looking for something a bit more contemporary, give this a shot...

Oh yea, speaking of Bob Marley, do any of you ever have this happen? You play any album made in Jamaica and invariably someone will ask you if you're listening to Bob Marley? I think a lot of people are under the impression that Bob might have been the only person to record a reggae or ska record...The most egregious example of this happened when I was giving a co-worker a ride home a few years back when I still worked at America Online...This dude seriously thought that Adam Sandler's "Ode to My Car" was Bob Marley!!

Think of that!! Bob Marley, whose discography is largely dedicated to fighting the injustices of poverty and oppression  takes a couple minutes to bitch about his piece of shit car not having a CD player...

Oh well, let's check out "Til' I'm Laid to Rest" by Buju Banton...Enjoy...