One-rhythm albums have their clear limitations, but the best of them are able to maintain a listener's interest by virtue of subtle remixing from track to track and a solid and varied array of singers and deejays, each of whom takes a different approach and reveals new subtleties of rhythm and wordplay. This assumes, of course, that the rhythm itself has subtleties to reveal, and is exciting enough to be fun for more than ten or 20 minutes at a time. "Kasablanca," unfortunately, is not one of those rhythms. Written by "Computer" Paul Hinton and the legendary drummer
Sly Dunbar, it comes across as insubstantial and scattered, never building up to anything like a propulsive rhythmic flow. The artists who succeed at making something worthwhile out of it are those who are able to bridge its sonic gaps and wrestle it into a groove by main force. No extra points for guessing ahead of time which ones those are: most notably, they're
Bounty Killer,
Future Troubles, and
Vybz Kartel. More surprising are those who fail to distinguish themselves:
Capleton, who was born to turn this kind of lead into conscious-dancehall gold but lets this one take him where it wants to go instead of vice versa;
Beenie Man, who phones in some by-the-numbers slackness;
Junior Kelly, who does the same. The ultimate condemnation of this rhythm lies in the fact that it leads such a talented and varied cast of vocalists to deliver such consistently plain-vanilla performances. ~ Rick Anderson