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DAMIAN "JR. GONG" MARLEY
Welcome to Jamrock
(Universal/Tuff Gong)
Welcome to Jamrock is not a strictly dancehall album; nor is it a reggae LP, though it's certainly Rastafari-inspired. Like 2002's Grammy-garnering Halfway Tree, Jamrock lays down the "digital Marley" aesthetic: squeaky clean, seamlessly layered live instrumentation and rhythmically diverse, canyon-expansive arrangements that amalgamize reggae, dancehall, dub, R&B, hip-hop, and lite-rock along with Damian's fearless flow. This acoustic refinement makes his highly political tirades go down cool and calm ("Welcome to Jamrock," the firecracker of a lead single, has a style that's more b-boy than rude bwoy)—and like most pop, the music makes you want to sing along or dance, even to the excerpts of political speeches from Haile Selassie I and Marcus Garvey that we hear in "Confrontation," a symphony-driven trancehall track doubling as a pulsating African battle cry. Even if his name isn't on the cover, though, Stephen Marley's work on Jamrock, as well as on brother Ziggy's albums with the Melody Makers, is key here. His September solo release might have been overlooked, but its title is an understatement: Got Music. Stephen does, and with his backing, Damian's serious, sophisticated, and rock-steady lyrics help place Welcome to Jamrock at the pinnacle of mainstream radio's growing Afro-Caribbean explosion. MAKKADA B. SELAH
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE
Over the Years and Through the Woods
(Interscope)
It'd be foolish to suggest that this new CD/DVD concert document generates the same sort of flash-point excitement as the straight-to-tape Desert Sessions that birthed some of main man Josh Homme's craftiest musical ideas. Still, it goes a long way in satiating those of us alienated by the overly deliberate night moves of the last Queens of the Stone Age record. Take it as a goodwill gesture, and as a reminder that we had Homme pegged all wrong as an inhuman hit machine after the contact highs of Songs for the Deaf. While we pissed away eight months grading Lullabies to Paralyze with an Ashlee Simpson checklist and praying for more cowbell, our hero quietly yanked the tablecloth away and recast himself as the bastard offspring of Neil Young. It really doesn't matter who's been sharing the stage since Homme drafted a new fantasy-league team; thanks to the stunt cinematography on the accompanying DVD, current drummer Joey Castillo morphs into Dave Grohl and back and—disturbingly enough—Mark Lanegan's head gets superimposed on top of Homme's during "Song for the Deaf." As to be expected, the DVD portion of Over the Years and Through the Woods captures the full set and kills with quantity, while the heavily edited CD captures most of the peaks and provides an extra showcase for previously unreleased tracks. The Motown goof "I Wanna Make It Wit Chu" tickles the ribs a little, but the best moment on either disc belongs to Homme's gleefully profane takedown of a heckler. The fun machine is back in effect. NICK GREEN
R. KELLY
Remix City Volume 1
(Jive)
The word "remix" means something different to R. Kelly than it does to most people. Sure, sometimes he adds a rapper when he reworks his songs, but he never simply drags the beat out with sound effects. A remix for him is about putting the chorus hook in a barely recognizable context, adding denser, more ecstatic verses, and yelling the word "remix" a lot. This disc of examples splits his career into thirds: new-jack priapism, tales of romantic regret and dead homiez interrupted by the occasional demand that you "get your ass in this tuubbbb," and the post-indictment genre exercises of recent years. At least five of these remixes can be found on the original albums, and not all the B-sides are as astounding as "Feeling on Yo' Booty (Hypnotize Mix)"—see the previous tub reference—but it's nice to have so many examples of his out-loud rethinks and frivolous asides in once place. The only real complaint about Remix City Volume 1 is that it doesn't include one of his many collaborations with Jay-Z (blame the suits, I guess) or any of the guest appearances he's dropped on other people's tracks. Twista's "So Sexy Chapter 2" ("You ain't never had a remix like this"), J.Lo's "Baby I Love You" ("I love you, too!"), and Ginuwine's "Hell Yeah" ("I'm so drunk I'm just drooling at the mouth . . . It's the remix!") would all be welcome here, and great releases like Pitbull's M.I. Still A.M.I. show just how revelatory and exciting a Kelly collabo comp could be. ANTHONY MICCIO
BIGG JUS
Poor People's Day
(Mush)
Here is possibly the most confrontational, dense, depressing, and indecipherable rap album of the year—and as a 45-minute exegesis on America as poverty-creation machine, it'd have to be. Bigg Jus, former member of Company Flow and presumable current member of an FBI watch list, is one of the few MCs out there who seem dedicated specifically to decrying the power structure instead of usurping it. It's hard to find any hip-hop analogues that come close—the sometimes-stilted way Jus rattles off flow-defying sociopolitical struggle dispatches is on some D. Boon shit, brainy sloganeering as lyricism and vice versa. Leadoff nonskit cut "Supa Nigga" is the red herring: Sky-bound R&B beats bolted onto a funeral march accompany some vaguely nonspecific badass-geek exhortations ("You need blueprints to construct a Stargate to escape the ass-whippin'"), but the accessibility gets dead-bolted from there on in. "Energy Harvester (Swallow the Sun)" heaves like a nuclear reactor with asthma under Jus' puzzle-box warnings of environmental decay. "This Is Poor People's Day" hiccups with fusion-jazz autism and an endless stream of anti-imperialist agitation straight out of any random issue of Workers' World; "Night Before" merges anarchistic visions of a coup d'état ("That's what happens when you start to feel immortal/The chickens come home and people feel like they need some kind of vindication/To reach out and kill the harbinger of doom") with lonely slow-jam delicacy. As obtuse and frustrating as it can be sometimes for listeners just coming down off a Kanye high, it's still all too necessary. In the meantime, you can curse the fact that this album has to exist while eagerly awaiting the day it sounds completely outmoded. NATE PATRIN
