Junior Kelly - Love So Nice [VP Records, 2001]
You’ll notice that many times in Reggae music, where often times, the actualization of an album isn’t something which is planned so far in advance every time, there’ll be quite a few albums seemingly built on the strength of a big hit tune which has the public’s attention and labels then hope they’ll support by buying an album named after it. GENERALLY speaking these albums can be anywhere from just BAD to average but hardly ever, if ever at all, any GOOD. In the last few years both Jah Mason and Turbulence have experienced similar situations with their albums Princess Gone: Saga Bed and Notorious: The Album, respectively, neither of which rank in the top half of albums in terms of quality from either artist in retrospect. However, things are not always as lukewarm or just bad as shown on Junior Kelly’s downright masterful album Love So Nice. A mere glance at the album’s cover probably shows you what happened here as you have a pretty generic picture with just BAD graphics (as if it were 1901 and not 2001) but you shouldn’t let a cover nor a potentially corny set of circumstances fool you as to this albums quality (or lack thereof). What happened with Love So Nice and why it exists is clear: Junior Kelly had SMASHED the place by dropping a tune which was absolutely taking over the world at the time and VP Records (who, coincidentally, released both of the aforementioned albums) snapped at the opportunity to snatch it up and push it on an album. Now I wonder if they assumed that they would just be making a big commercial hit with Love So Nice, or if they knew that they’d be making the biggest album of Junior Kelly’s entire career and a PERFECT candidate for this series???
{note: I specifically left out the final two tunes on the album, which were (re)mixes}
#1. Clean Heart
You can very well make a case for any of the first six tunes on Love So Nice being the absolute best tune on the album but my choice (at least for right now) is the HUGE opener, Clean Heart. From the simple combination of the message of cleaning up oneself and, in turn, cleaning up and changing the world - with that BIG and SMOOTH riddim (which may have been specifically for this tune as I only know of one other tune which uses it, Anthony B’s Love Or Infatuation): The song was an utter joy and a damn PRIVILEGE to listen to.
Line of the song: “Out box the blessing from your mouth. Don’t change your route, righteousness is what this song is all about. Go forth, go long, go tell dem, righteousness it haffi sprout”
#2. Love So Nice
I shouldn’t even have to tell you about this one should I? If you took a list down of the biggest and most significant tunes of the past decade or so in Reggae, your list wouldn’t mean shit if it didn’t include Love So Nice. It wasn’t the best song anyone had ever heard but the song just HIT’S THE SPOT. Relating a message that pretty much anyone capable of having a conscious thought can relate to, still true all of these years later. MAGIC!
Line of the song: “If love so nice tell me why it hurt so bad. If love, LOVE so nice, tell me, tell me why I’m sad!”
#3. Sunshine
In terms of what it’s about, the rather complex Sunshine doesn’t fall too far from the title track at all, although, for the most part, this song finds Kelly as the leaved rather than the leaver. I really like the vocals on this one as it definitely comes with that vocal edge that Junior Kelly usually has in his music but he really makes his ‘case’ for this one as he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears more than a few times.
Line of the song: “Search, search high and low. Search everywhere that I know you go. Calling your friends, the ones that I know. Telling them to tell you that I won’t low”
#4. Boom Draw
Probably, besides the first two tracks, the tune which is most associated with this album. Boom Draw is an herbalist tune of EPIC proportions indeed. The song had a very ‘common’ appeal to me because Junior Kelly, for the most part, just kind of sounds like some guy sitting around singing through what happen one day. The stirring second verse is even more on that type of vibes where he basically says, “I just got off of work, I had a hard day, I want to relax and I want to smoke”. How can you argue against that???? YOU CAN’T!
Line of the song: “Carry me in front a judge and dem deh time mi start to preach, tell him fi run go look for robber, gwan go look fi thief! Cah I no see no laws in Babylon weh I breach, burning up the herb should be the least”
#5. Juvenile
This one was interesting because Juvenile is the actually the title track of not one, but two Junior Kelly albums and one of his biggest hits to date (besides they album Juvenile, there’s also a dubbed out version, both for Penitentiary and at least somewhat legitimate apparently). The version which appears on Love So Nice, however, is different from the original, however, between the two I prefer this version here of this timeless sufferer’s anthem.
Line of the song: “Juvenile, I’m on your side and all the hardships you face. Juvenile please no get so vile and buss no gun today”
#6. Hungry Days
BANGING! The beginning of this tune is better than you are. Hungry Days is just on another level and if you want to call it the best tune on Love So Nice, I’d probably agree with you in a few hours or so. If your ears tune in just right, you’ll notice that it uses a souped up cut of Bob Marley’s immortal War riddim and where Marley is these days, I’m sure he would LOVE this tune, probably almost as much as I do.
Line of the song: “Hunger deh by mi side, 24-7, so mi want a one tune fi go pon di top ten. Cah dat a di only way di sufferation gonna end”
#7. Faith [featuring Brian & Tony Gold]
You wouldn’t normally expect an album like this to have a combination and certainly not one like this. On Faith Kelly linked with veteran singers/back up singers Brian & Tony Gold and did so, in my opinion to create one of the best tunes on the album continuing that wonderful streak. They did so with a tune which didn’t (and hasn’t) received its just due, in my opinion, to date but everyone who REALLY listened to it, Im sure, well appreciated it. Myself included.
Line of the song: “Make faith be your food, hope be your drink. Put a hole inna doubtful battleship and make dat sink. Yow we no want no negativity down here, mind haffi crystal clear”
#8. Paradise
Having not specifically gone through Love So Nice in quite awhile, I ever so barely remembered Paradise any at all but having spun through it now several times for the purpose of this piece, I remember how much I used to like this tune. The tune finds Kelly posing the particularly poignant proposition of whether the attainable Paradise was a only a physical and not a mental place???
Line of the song: “Daddy is asleep is asleep, don’t you wake him up. Cause only when he’s asleep, he finds paradise at his feet”
#9. Sleep Last Night
Let’s see how honest you are: I’m willing to admit that the first time you hear backing singers on Sleep Last Night that it basically scares the hell out of me, are you? They just kind of kind pop up out of nowhere (sounding like robots, no less) but they help Kelly deliver one big message. He’s wondering just how the corrupt powers that be of the world can get to sleep at night knowing what NASTINESS they’ve put the poorer class of people through. Hell if I know Junior Kelly.
Line of the song: “. . .but I laugh at the fool’s blunder. Cah now him can’t stand him own reflection, conscience taking over”
#10. Jah Nuh Dead
You’ve undoubtedly heard dozens, if not more, tunes like this but this one has a particularly SWEET edge to it. The song addresses the ‘rumour’ of His Majesty’s death and Junior Kelly just ain’t buying it (neither am I). Of course, Kelly relies on his greatest bit of evidence to prove his case: He knows HE lives because he feels it.
Line of the song: “. . . yow you convince she and convince he but you can’t convince me”
#11. Standing Firm
I believe this downright dazzling tune was the title track of the European or the original (or the bootleg) version of the album or something like that, which was completely ridiculous but the song itself was quite nice. Although probably having lost some of luster because its an acoustic song and at the moment I’m DAMN tired of acoustic songs but Standing Firm, when you’re in the mood for it, is SERIOUS vibes and comes and goes rather fast at just over two and a half minute.
Line of the song: “. . . you can praise who you idol. I KNOW JAH IS THE ONLY WAY”
#12. Black Woman
Love So Nice doesn’t have an obligatory tune for the Mother’s of the well (which is shocking considering some of the lyrics and the directions that it goes in) but it is WELL ‘littered’ with tunes kind of broadly giving thanks and praise to the Black Woman of the world. ‘Black Woman’ may just be the best of the pack in so many ways and it finds Kelly in a meditative mood as he WONDERFULLY connects the plight of the Afrikan woman and the plight of the world itself and calls upon His Majesty to help them, above all others.
Line of the song: “Full time fi di truth it reveal, say yuh tough like a stainless steel. Running a home! You alone with yuh strong backbone”
#13. Well Runs Dry
Well Runs Dry (or ‘Well Runs Draw‘, as it was programmed apparently) is kind of a funky/R&B sounding tune which pretty much ran under the radars for the most part and you REALLY have to scrutinize it to find its true power. The tune, at least to me, sounds like quite the freestyle and I would be pretty surprised if Junior Kelly went into the booth, knowing EXACTLY what he would be doing lyrically speaking. What he does end up doing is giving one cool ass song calling for social improvement in every way.
Line of the song: “Should I curl up and die? Or should I continue the vibes?”
#14. Jewel Of The Nile
Apparently Junior Kelly doesn’t reserve his FIRE for those participating in corruption and vile activity, he apparently has quite a bit for the special woman in his life as well as he shows on this KNOCKING tune which is definitely one of its signature and best. The song is BLAZING throughout and makes point after point for those listeners discerning enough to get through the undeniable flash and flare to get to the core of the matter.
Line of the song: “Jewel of the Nile, woman you qualified fi bring mi child. Empress Menen with your dreamy eyes and your fruit caan spoil so smile!”
#15. Go Down Satan
Plopped down right after Jewel Of The Nile, Go Down Satan completes a BIG two tune stretch on the album not seen since the very beginning lot of it. This song is WONDERFUL! Kelly works his magic over a re-lick of an old Studio One piece by the name of the Please Be True riddim which he works nearly to perfection chanting down Satan and negativity wherever they both may reside.
Line of the song: “All form of mass communication is based on manipulating, indoctrinating yuh mind, yuh mind, yuh mind, yuh mind! You may dismiss this as a myth or a crazy person talking gibberish but the facts are piled up so high, so high!”
#16. Hotta Fi Get
Love So Nice ends rather surprisingly with a PURE Dancehall track with conscious lyrics (for the most part) which Kelly, although he’s done a few here and there, certainly isn’t KNOWN for doing. The tune comes across a rather pedestrian (Mid-Eastern infused) Dancehall riddim, the Plague, but the attraction here is actually the lyrics as Junior Kelly declares himself big and bad; but he’s only that way because His Majesty has allowed it.
Line of the song: “Choke him! Gimme mi way mek mi wet him wid mi sword yah. A Ras no come yah fi linga, heathen come pet wi no powder. Biggup mi Mom & Dad cah dis a one Ras weh dem proud a. Come in like a poison gas and we no itch nor scratch! Kill heathen before dem hatch!”
Synopsis: With an album like Love So Nice, it’s pretty difficult to find one prevailing and unifying idea which the album would stand on such as in the cases of the other installments of this series. However, that doesn’t at all mean that such an idea doesn’t exist because I (DUH) believe that it does and I believe that you’ll use the TITLE of the album to see it. The actual title track, itself, isn’t what you want to look at in terms of the overall message but it definitely plays into it, you just want to focus in on the actual TITLE.
“Love So Nice”
Again, if you didn’t know the song with the same title (and I know! It’s hard as hell to take the song away from it but try really really hard to do it so you can see this for a minute and then I‘ll even bring you back)m what would that sentence mean to you - Love So Nice? Of course, love is so nice, it’s pretty unarguably the most powerful and the one which contributes so much to our eventual actions. So me simply saying to you, “love so nice”, might not do much but when I follow it up with these songs which SPECIFICALLY tell you WHY love is so nice, it takes a different meaning. The most significant song on that theme would definitely be Clean Heart which doesn’t DIRECTLY point it out to you where it’s going but you can put it all together very easily. If your heart is clean (Sizzla heads remember BIG tune name Clean Up Your Heart), or if you have love in your heart, then you’re on the right course. Junior Kelly does, however, DISTINCTLY point out what the effects (or perks) of having a clean heart and the perils of not having one are on the tune and in my opinion it’s one of the most significant trains of thought to over stand and REALLY comprehend Love So Nice. BUT! As I said, I’ll bring you back: Kelly also covers the second part of the Love So Nice lyric throughout the album (tell me what it hurts so bad). Songs like Hungry Days, Juvenile, Paradise, Go Down Satan, and ESPECIALLY Sleep Last Night, show the not so NICE side of the matter. Sleep Last Night is the perfect example because it specifically tells you the fate of those not having a clean heart and not having loving. Their conscience traps them SO DEEP that they can’t even sleep at night which is far from ‘nice’. The song also, in my opinion, takes the concept of “love” and makes it tangible as it tells you what happens when it is absent from your life = You can’t even find rest! Love So Nice also makes it a point to talk about the oppressed and forgotten within the oppressed and forgotten society, specifically Black Women and children (FOR YOU I HAVE SO MUCH LOVE!) who, in reality are not APART of society but are society. Love So Nice’s kind of ‘coincidental’ promotion of LOVE is its true foundation, whether its creators knew that or not. Standing firmly on that ground, it was one BIG album and I stand just as firmly when I call it a bonafide MODERN CLASSIC!
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