Album Review

Ras Shiloh ››
Only King Selassie

Last year Greensleeves Records embarked on an interesting second round of teamwork with one of reggae music’s most prominent and important producers. Lloyd James aka. King Jammy was in fact already back in the 1970s working for Greensleeves, where he released a lot of fine albums making his normally ‘hard-to-get’ vinyl productions available outside of Jamaica. Amongst them were musical milestones like the Sleng Teng riddim and other fine albums like Black Uhuru’s Black Sounds Of Freedom.

The second round of teamwork between King Jammy and the Greensleeves label have resulted in two highly acclaimed albums Sizzla’s Waterhouse Redemption of last year and Natural Black’s 2007 release Jah Guide making Ras Shiloh’s new Only King Selassie the third in a row. For many years Ras Shiloh have proved himself to be a voice to be reckoned with and his earlier works for producers like Donovan Germain of Penthouse, Massive B, Maximum Sounds and Lion Vibes have fully shown his diversity.

Earlier this year Ras Shiloh released the fine Bobby Digital production Coming Home and now he is back hitting the spot with the magnificent Only King Selassie, which probably will be rated as one of the best new roots pieces of this year. Produced by King Jammy in his Waterhouse Studio in Kingston the album features 15 great tracks with Ras Shiloh at his best, riding many of the legendary and crucial Jammy’s riddims like I Love King Selassie, Sleng Teng and Tonight amongst others. Standout tracks like I Know, To The King, So Proud, Rastaman To Africa, Hardcore Steppers , Mama Africa featuring singjay Lutan Fyah and the sublime Praises To Jah are all spiritually strong and uplifting making the listener jump on board the reggae-train to Zion and the album an essential release.