Another One For the Road

Another One For the Road

You couldn’t find dancehall voices more polarized than Cocoa Tea and Cutty Ranks: One—Cocoa Tea—was a soothing, natural-born lovers rocker who carried the searching spirit of roots music into the dancehall era; the other—Ranks—was a human jackhammer who once toasted about having his own electric chair. Despite obvious differences, Another One for the Road—a supergroup affair rounded out by hook man Home T—mostly works, juxtaposing gruff Ranks-led numbers (“Original Gangster”) with soulful Tea-led ones (“No Blood for Oil”), with Home T stepping in to balance out the mood. Most notable are the experiments: “Hip Hop,” a decidedly early-’90s effort to bridge the cultural gap, and “Alien,” a New Jack Swing-type track that interpolates James Brown’s “Living in America.” A strange—but singular—meeting of three very different dancehall voices.

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