Do Good

Album Review

As Turbulence closes in on the beginning of his fourth decade, he seems to be settling down in a number of ways. For one thing, he's found the perfect producer in Andreas "Brotherman" Christopherson, who has an acute understanding of Turbulence's strengths and weaknesses and provides him with a wide variety of rhythms that allow him to flex his full range of singing and chatting skills. For another thing, he's beginning to relax a little bit on the bitter and vituperative Bobo Dread rhetoric that has marred some of his earlier outings — though he retains and promotes the sadly typical Rastafarian double standards of sexual behavior for men and women (most notably on "Mothers"). Most importantly, as he gets older his pitch and vocal control have gotten more reliable; two or three years ago, he couldn't have handled the demands of a song like "I Believe" without falling out of tune. The rhythms on Do Good are consistently brilliant and innovative, of course: "Freedom Train" is built on a soul-inflected backing track complete with wacka-wacka guitar, "Next Flight" is dense but minimalist one-drop, and "Move On" features strange but effective classical strings. On the rhythm side, only the lackluster electro of "Good Time" and the weirdly abstract "Marihuana [Northern Lights Remix]" fail to impress. Highly recommended overall.