Spare a thought for VP Records. Here's Bounty Killer at the biggest international point of his career, having guested on No Doubt's 'Hey Baby', and what do they get in return? A furious, bullet-spraying album that is the epitome of underground, hardcore dancehall ragga.
Track titles like 'Gun Mouth', 'Blood Bath', 'Just Dead' and 'Rise Mi Gun' will do him no commercial favours and reinforce the notion that he's not the sort of boy you'd take home for muffins with mum. But that's Bounty Killer's jewel, what makes him Jamaica's most beloved living artist: he's the one DJ who's never sold out, yet still sold healthily worldwide.
This fifty-track double CD gives us the two celebrated sides of Bounty. First up is the 'Warlord', he who will take on anyone in the Jamaican recording industry, smears blood and roars all the way through disc one, The Art of War.
Riding beautifully the latest rhythm tracks ('Candle Wax', 'Martial Arts' among others), he mercilessly cusses Sizzla, Baby Cham and Beenie Man (who once said Bounty Killer's music 'tears your heart out' - what thanks). This is for thick-skinned dancehall groovers, combative lyrics all the way and beats, such as the pulsating 'Look Good', that make Missy Elliot sound as meek as Abba.
And then there is his other, more gentle side, the personification of ghetto struggle who goes by the name of the 'Poor People's Governor'. Disc two has a conscious, more universal edge, drawing from rap, roots and R&B yet keeping the heavy dancehall flavour.
'Mystery', riding the 'Rice and Peas' rhythm, is probably the biggest tune on the album and the opening track, 'Dancehall Rules and Regulations', could not have taken a finer rhythm track, the famous 'Punany', to get its point across. Bounty teams up with Morgan Heritage for a gorgeous slice of traditional roots on 'Gunz in the Ghetto'.
This, his seventh album over an uncompromising, ten-year career, may not be his magnum opus, as was 'My Xperience'. But, at the very least, it's the best blueprint currently on the market for dancehall music.
