Freedom Cry
No matter what you think of this singer-deejay's extremist politics, you cannot deny his immense talent. Sizzla first grabbed the attention of the reggae world with his '95 "Black and Comely" hit "combination" with tenor Mikey General, in which the then-19-year-old Sizzla managed to demonstrate the radical potential of reggae deejay (rap) style with the brief line "I and I a pure African." The following year Sizzla swept the scene with the force of Hurricane Georges. Two albums, released simultaneously in August '97 by dueling labels, Brickwall'sBlack Woman and Childand Xterminator'sPraise Ye Jah, collected a mere fraction of the rapturous black redemption Sizzla songs that made him a reggae obsession and object of hip-hop fascination. Equipped with the reggae deejay's requisite bluster plus the singer's ability to pitch a note anywhere on the scale, Sizzla subsumes even those considerable gifts to the riddim God, dropping the words to his resonant lyrics like the lightning-swift polyrhythms of a master drummer. Sizzla's aesthetic compass is precisely on course and his craft even further refined for this set of hit singles from Xterminator (which precedes the release of another album from Brickwall). For many frustrated reggae fans, though, the near sacramental awe Sizzla evokes here is undermined by those off-the-record public harangues against Christians, white people, and other "Babylonians."--Elena Oumano