Sizzla - I Space [Greensleeves Records, 2007]
Never tell me that you get tired of the practice in Reggae music of using the same batch of riddims for more than one artist. If this weren’t the case, who knows how much BEAUTIFUL music we wouldn’t have and I might not even have a blog altogether. Of course, there are more extreme situations, but sometimes even those can lead to something beautiful. Such was the case back a couple of years ago when Byron Murray’s In The Streetz imprint produced and released (through a wide variety of different distributors) several different albums from several different artists on what was, essentially, the same batch of SOLID riddims. These names included some of the best of the best in the modern Roots Reggae arena, including names like Luciano, Turbulence, Natural Black and Norris Man. Now, were you to have just left things with those few, I don’t think many would have complained, but also, had you been so strict as to put a ‘cap’ on these riddims and their popularity and their subsequent ‘usefulness’, then we also would have missed out on I-Space. I can’t tell you how many times since 2002, when that unforgettable album was originally released, I’ve seen a Sizzla album with a sticker or a press release which has read “The best Sizzla album since Da Real Thing”. But, if whichever album ‘that’ is, is not named I-Space, then the sticker is not accurate. I-Space was ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! The album was a rather refreshing bit of material from The High Priest apart from some of the more varied and polarizing releases which he had been doing and, again, had Murray dumped his sack of riddims before he got to Sizzla, we would have missed THE BEST Sizzla ALBUM SINCE DA REAL THING and 2007’s best Reggae album. Period.
#1. Really & Truly
The start to this album gave listeners pretty much everything they needed in terms of an idea of what to expect. Sizzla does this, WONDERFULLY, with the aid of one of the most revered and venerable compositions of all time, Bob Marley’s legendary Natural Mystic riddim. Those standards not being within reach, of course, what Sizzla does push here is arguably the single strongest tune on I-Space and I’m sure Marley himself would have loved it. Really and truly.
Line of the song: “Really and truly. King Rastafari is my shield”
#2. Irresistible
This downright strangely vibed lovers tune kind of swept in slowly, but I’m now to the point where simply skimming through the album and listening to it one time isn’t enough AT ALL. The song features a kind of playful mood for Sizzla, as he drifts never-endingly between a straight chanting style and that typically annoying falsetto, which, oddly enough, isn’t so annoying this time around.
Line of the song: “Girl I wanna know you. Girl I got so many things to show you. Girl I love the way your Mama grow you”
#3. Long Live The King of Kings
TEARS! You can take this tune in a pretty standard way, but, of course, that isn’t my style. The punch line on this absolutely GORGEOUS kind of casually mentions “and His Empress” after stating the title of the song and with that and the actual song itself, I took it in two ways: There are two sources of ‘help’ and ‘comfort’ for mankind - His Imperial Majesty and His (your) Empress. BEAUTIFUL!
Line of the song: “1892 was the year of His birth. The second of November, 1930, crown Selassie I the first. Deliverer of the poor, He’s the ruler for the Earth. More life! More love! Listen the lyrics inna mi verse”
#4. Make Me Yours
That SYRUPY sweetness you hear backing Make Me Yours is the Desperate Lover riddim, which is the remake of an old Studio One riddim by the name of the Girls Like Dirt riddim and it is absolutely stunning in the hands of the High Priest. This tune (one of my wife’s favourites in recent years) has become a bit of an ‘underground’ staple for the album and I’ve heard it receive multiple spins in more than a few dances the last couple of years. It’s not hard to see why.
Line of the song: “Hug me tight. Make me yours. Love me right. Come on, give me more”
#5. Chant Dem Down
I kind of go back and forth between what is my own favourite tune on I-Space and, for whatever it’s worth, right now (and for the past year or so) my choice is the absolutely KNOCKING Chant Dem Down. The tune finds Kalonji calling down fire and brimstone levels of condemnation upon the wicked and those who fight against righteousness, wherever they may hide.
Line of the song: “Chat bout dat, dem chat bout dem dis. Chat weh dem got but they ain’t doing shhhh”
#6. Show Some Love
For a tune which starts so ‘serenely’ that you can just picture singing the tune while casually going for a walk down the road, Show Some Love certainly does develop into a SIMPLE PIECE OF BRILLIANCE! Again, with the sudden change from just kind of talking to an exaggerated wailing chant, the tune almost sounds like two (or three) different ones and that’s even before you dig into the song lyrically. Doing so will add even another POWERFUL dimension to an already STELLAR message.
Line of the song: “Show some love, be strong. And help those you can. Tell them where they’re wrong. One for all, all for one”
#7. Talk About
A freestyle. I can almost guarantee you that this tune was written in a very short order (if it was even written at all) and didn’t take a very long time to record in general. Talk About finds Kalonji tackling the third straight SWEET old school vibed riddim on the album and here, he handles it with a hoarse and gruff delivery, but you should ignore the deliver in the face of what he’s saying. The tune itself is just about love and is done so well and, again, I’m sure virtually completely from his head top.
Line of the song: “Remove the guns and bombs babylon go implement fi dem. Come, I’ll teach you how play on the instrument. Little children you’ve gotta be wise and prudent. Listen to The Most High, student”
#8. Stop All The Violence
Utilizing what is probably one of In The Streetz’ most recognizable compositions (the barely there Mo Bay Riddim), shows that he can also master the art of minimalism with a tune in Stop All The Violence which is SO EASY, that it is almost musically ‘invisible’. However, for those listeners lucky enough to have radios (or ears) capable of registering the vibes, you’ve likely already recognized the tune as one of the strongest on the album altogether.
Line of the song: “Let Jah. Arise. And Burn. All his foes. To Mount. Zion High. We All. Shall Go”
#9. Only Jah Alone
This one had “WINNER” written all over it and from the title, to the first VIBRANT note heard. Only Jah Alone is a BEAUTIFUL and QUIETLY CONFIDENT piece which urges the masses to seek The Almighty in times, bad and good, and to do so willingly and begin to live a more upful and HELPFUL existence for your own and the world’s sake.
Line of the song: “Only Jah alone, only Jah alone, only Jah alone, can break all chains and set you free”
#10. The Woman In My Life
Arguably the most complete love song on I Space (definitely this side of that ‘thing’ that’s hanging out at #12), The Woman In My Life is one for the guys already in the relationship (like moi) who may need that constant reminding to treat your lady at least a little special (I don’t have that problem) (at least I don’t think I do). It also speaks to the general niceness and comfort presented with the relationship and how important it is to upkeep all of it.
Line of the song: “Jah bless the day when heaven create you. There’s no other day, like the day when I met you. To the holy places, surely gone take you. I love and embrace you, baby what did that make you? A lady love, attention and splendour. A lady love, when it reach you’re so tender. A lady love, I’ll always remember. From January gone onto December”
#11. Jah Protect My Life
CLASSIC! Jah Protect My Life came complete with its own classic riddim (Murray’s cut of the Devil’s Pickney) which help to cement its status as a future (insta) classic, at least in my eyes. In about twenty years, I’ll feel quite comfy and content telling people the tune is twenty years older than it is and that it was the BIG tune, way back when. It wasn’t, of course, but that’s your lost. I LOVED this tune.
Line of the song: “Babylon disrespect just through you poor pon di scene. Tru dem nah know say you pure and clean. Open the doors and let Jah Children come in. King Selassie I is the Haile Supreme. Seen”
#12. Rock My World
I told you about this one a few songs ago. Rock My World (CORNY ASS TITLE and all) is ridiculous. Murray serves up a slow, underhanded pitch with the If I Were A Carpenter riddim and Sizzla knocks a damn unusual homerun (inside the park variety) with about forty different styles of deliveries and something that ONLY he can generally get away with. Mission accomplished.
Line of the song: “I want to behold the countenance upon your face, in my arms girl, I prepare your place”
#13. Be Careful
Simple message music. This electric sounding late blooming tune has nothing ostensibly going for it in the ‘AMAZING’ or ‘SUPERB’ limits, however, it is both of those and more. The tune reminds me of older Sizzla tunes like the EPIC No Time To Gaze and Greedy Joe, which had nothing dynamic about them, but were just SO GOOD on their own standing. Be Careful is just STRONG and it finds Kalonji delivering a high quality message to take an extra care before you act. One the album’s quietest and finest simultaneously.
Line of the song: “Be careful of the works you perform yow. Remember that the Binghi man did warn you”
#14. Nothing But Love
I just don’t know what was going on here. Nothing But Love was KNOCKING! Crossing through over a heavy Nyah drum backing, you’ll hear literally dozens of tunes like this one every year, but they, unlike this one, tend to rely on the addictive drumming to ‘help’ because they usually aren’t very high on actual substance. Nothing But Love was the DIRECT opposite of this as it dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s and its point (and what an upful one it was) was crystal clear.
Line of the song: “Ignorance is our greatest problem, education is the only way to solve them. Don’t you act as if you don’t care. Don’t you act as if you don’t even hear”
#15. Put The People Interest First
Albeit terribly clichéd at this point, the wonder which is I-Space comes to its conclusion with an acoustic tune, Put The People Interest First. This one (as they all do) lives and dies on the strength of its lyrical content and, in those respects, the song is perhaps just shy of immortal. Take the title as a slogan or a cliché on its own and you won’t get it for the purpose in which I’m sure it was intended. However, if you see that title as the center of a ‘community of words’ and see how well the tune travels around that community, then you’ll see what I saw: Put The People First was magic.
Line of the song: TIE
A) “We do the work and they gaining the money. Alright I speak for the right, I’m not a dummy. Disapprove corruption, mi haffi fyah bun it. The earth is the Lord and a Rastaman run it”
B [for simple COOLNESS in how it’s said, the very last line on the tune] ) “Put Jah people interest first. Who Jah bless, no man curse”
Synopsis: Well, as much as I told myself I was going to shy away from delving into the title of the album AT ALL (because I‘m COMPLETELY SURE that it was totally random), the very convoluted and almost certainly incorrect conclusion to which I ultimately arrived, had quite a bit to do with just that, so let’s try it out shall we?
The concept of I-Space can be taken in one of two ways in my opinion. The first being the obvious connection of ‘myspace’ and, judging by the fonts used on the album’s cover (very old school computer-like), that’s certainly a direction in which Greensleeves wanted to take things and, for the purpose of selling albums, that’s fine. However, you can also look at the title in terms of what it actually is, phonetically and linguistically, which is what I’m going to do now (duh). So what is I space? It’s life. When you place such a broad characteristic or standard on an album, you do so with an inherent ’right’ to pretty much do whatever you feel like doing (of course, you always have that right, but we give thanks to those who actually try to live up to and demonstrate the album’s title), but in this case, it’s far more specific, isn’t it? I Space, in reference to Sizzla is Sizzla’s life, so what you have you here is literally a piece of his everyday life. Like most of his music (to my knowledge) I can’t imagine that I-Space took very long to write at all and still, it is so nice, so you can very well be sure that in writing it Kalonji relied upon what he has (or at least what he says he has) relied upon for his entire career: His life. I go back to the tune ‘Show Some Love’ which, as I said, starts like he’s just walking around thinking out loud:
“It would be nice to help the poor people suffering
Sing and rejoice because The Most High watch over them
Nothing can change my love, that’s inside of me
Most High up above, he will provide for me
Ain’t got no friend in my society
They only laugh and pretend and that’s reality
But the spice of life is variety
Why consider the poor the minority”
After which he immediately leaps into the chorus (which is essentially a call for HELP and consistent help) and then that type of relaxed and laid back delivery is never used again, not only on the tune, but on the entire album. HOWEVER, when you take note of the tune ‘Stop The Violence‘, I think it’s pretty similar. Again, that delivery is almost not even there, I would probably describe it best as ‘bedtime chanting’, Sizzla literally sounds WORN OUT. He sounds tired. After having walked through his community (Show Some Love) and being disheartened by what he saw (Talk About), he’s exhausted and the very fact that another tune on the album (the very next one no less, although again, that’s almost certainly random) is named Only Jah Alone. Why? Because it’s Sizzla and that’s how he writes? Sure but after seeing what he saw in his own community what refuge would you imagine Sizzla would seek??? DUH!
“Only Jah Alone
Only Jah Alone
Only Jah Alone
Can break all chains and set you free”
And he says this after having CLEARLY identified what those “chains” are and on tunes like Only Jah Alone, ‘Realy & Truly’ and ‘Jah Protect My Life’, he also points to He who has the keep to remove them. Other tunes, still, like ‘The Woman In My Life’ have far easier decipherable sources of inspiration (HIS WIFE), but all of these things are kind of general expressions and representations of what? His life. His ‘-Space’. And I have a PIECE of an idea about the setting of the tracks on the album which I’ll spare you, but I’ll leave you with this. Maybe my suppositions that the album was rather flatly random (especially considering Murray’s involvement, he CLEARLY had an idea to make several albums with the riddims) was wrong. And instead, I-Space is one of Sizzla’s most personal album’s to date as he basically invites the listeners into his life for a day. In doing so, he also invited us into a BONAFIDE MODERN REGGAE CLASSIC!
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