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Sly and Robbie Present Taxi
Sly and Robbie Present Taxi
Ground-breaking Dancehall album from two of Jamaica's best reggae producers.
Sampler
Both Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare had been slowly establishing themselves separately in Jamaica as professional musicians, Sly drumming for Skin, Flesh and Bones and Robbie playing bass with The Aggrovators. When they both finally got together as part of The Revolutionaries, for the newly created Channel One studio, they found that they shared very similar influences and ideas about music and so joined forces and went on to become arguably the best riddim players and makers out of the island ever.
In 1979 the ‘Riddim Twins’ started their own TAXI label to showcase their creations and enlisted many top reggae artists to supply vocals. ‘Sly & Robbie Present Taxi’ is a collection of songs from that initial start in ’79 to the albums original release in ’81. Lyrically most of the songs here tend to be on the softer side of reggae with many concerning love and emotions, such as Jimmy Riley’s My Woman's Love, the Wailing Souls catchy Sweet Sugar Plum and classics Oh What A Feeling by Gregory Isaacs and Sitting And Watching from Dennis Brown. On the more rootsy side are the likes of Black Uhuru with World Is Africa, Junior Delgado’s haunting tale of Fort Augustus the notorious offshore female only Jamaican penitentiary plus there is a lighter side from General Echo with some dancehall chat on the amusing Drunken Master.
The album also serves as something of a gateway in to the changes that were about to happen in reggae with electronic touches here and there plus Sly’s use of syndrums. This collection of songs, with the exception of instrumental Hot You're Hot which is one of those two steppin’, clubby, reggae, soul concoctions, seem to have stood the test of time well and not become too dated.
Released on CD as part of Spectrum's 'Originals' range, there are no frills just the original album and art work; it’s great to see this somewhat seminal album finally being made available again.
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Read comments (1)
| Posted by MrQuick on 02.16.2012 | |
| Released without S&R's consent or even being informed about this... The copyrights belong to TAXI and are being pirated by Universal. | |
Comments actually desactivated due to too much spams
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