Photo Courtesy VP Records
A few years back Richie Spice took the reggae world by storm with the anti-violence anthem “Earth A Run Red,” a song whose massive popularity was prophetically tied to the violent days it chronicled. Then the album “Spice In Your Life” gained him critical praise internationally and positioned him to conquer the rest of the globe. His recent follow-up “In The Streets to Africa” is at once more of the same vein and yet unexpected. Where “Spice” developed a distinctively new school roots sound with acoustic hints of Tracey Chapman and afropop influence, his new set is decidedly, even defiantly, retro. The lovers rock of “Brown Skin” maybe a logical progression of that neo-JA soul, “Streets” mostly travels backward in time to put the Spice stamp on foundation riddims like Swing Easy (“High Grade”) and Johnny Osbourne’s classic “Truth & Rights” (“Youth So Cold”).
This sonic defiance embodies Richie’s fiercely independent approach to making music: instead of changing with the weather, he and his 5th Element label have stuck to their metaphorical guns and carved out a territory—and a cult following—unaffected by the trends of pop music, or even dancehall. It’s also reflected by the extremely exclusive roster of guest appearances on “Streets,” which—besides Richie’s older brothers Pliers and Spanner Banner—is limited to one: singer Joseph Hill of the legendary group Culture. If anything this record seems to be a declaration that Richie is less interested in being counted among the ranks of current hitmakers as he is in proving he can hold his own with the likes of Hill or Dennis Brown or Jacob Miller…in other words, the most venerated singers in Jamaica’s musical hall a’flame.
