Resolution Review – “Mr Marley”

Damian Marley – “Mr Marley”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a pretty big Bob Marley fan.  One of my favorite lyrics of all time is “One good thing about music, when it hits you fell no pain.  So hit me with music”.  I got into Bob in college when I was exploring things (shall we say?).  Like a lot of people, I had “Legend” and that was about it.  When I started to really explore his catalog, I realized how much of an amazing of a musician we had all lost.

I had listened to Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers in the 80′s but they were too much like pop music for me to really get into them.  A while back I was browsing around the web and started down a path of following Stephen Marley’s music production history.  This led me to discover the youngest of Bob’s children, Damian “Jr Gong” Marley.  The first album I checked out was the one that everyone was talking about “Welcome to Jamrock”.  I have to admit, I wasn’t a big fan.  I missed the hip-hop / rap bus.  I never got on and I don’t have any intention of trying to catch it.   I appreciate it on an intellectual level but I do not like it on an emotional level.  I’ve tried to listen time and time again and with very few exceptions (Beastie Boys, Public Enemy) I don’t have much of the genre in my music collection.  ”Jamrock” had too much rap in it for my tastes.

Being the completist that I am, I had picked up all three of Damian’s releases at the same time.  After hearing “Jamrock” and not really connecting with it, I didn’t pop in the other two for some time.  I decided to change that recently and put in his first release, “Mr Marley”.  I like it a lot more on initial listens than I did “Jamrock”.  It’s an interesting mix of Reggae, Hip-Hop and a bit of Sixties Soul Music sprinkled around.  I don’t know if it was intentional or not but on this first release, Damian really sounds like his late father.  So much so in parts that I am left wondering if I just heard a sample or not.  Some of the tracks are forgettable (“Party Time” being my most skipped track) but some of the tracks are really gripping.  The first song, “Trouble” has that Sixties vibe I was talking about and is an interesting choice for the opening track.  He does an inspired cover of “Trenchtown Rock”, called “Kingston 12″ on this release.  It’s a sped up version with a rap coming in the middle of it.

I’m still planning on spending some time with this one before moving on to the next piece of unheard music in my collection but this one has been on repeat a lot and it was a great way to start my day listening to it on the drive in to work at 6:00am.