Horace Andy

After three decades in the business, reggae legend Horace Andy became an "overnight success" when his collaboration with British trip-hop superstars Massive Attack on "Angel" (itself a reworking of Andy's earlier "You Are My Angel," also featured in our Essentials playllst) catapulted him into the consciousness of a generation that hadn't even been born when he cut his first sides. It was back in 1972 that his crushed-velvet falsetto spurred the dubwise "Sky Larking" to the top of the Jamaican charts, yet another product of Coxsone Dodd's legendary Studio One hit factory. Andy also dips back into the '70s soul catalog for a brooding version of Bill Withers' ultimate she-ain't-no-good-for-me-but-I-can't-help-myself song, "Ain't No Sunshine."

In Next Steps, Horace brings a rocksteady flavor to a GRAMMY® winning folkie's hit, burns his way through a smokin' reggae anthem, and more.

Andy wrings a surprisingly emotional performance out of his lighter-than-helium vocals in his remake of Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion" from 1998's Mr. Bassie, and the backing track goes straight for a tropical authenticity that outstrips the original, despite Simon's having recorded in Jamaica. And for those of you looking to compare originals with remakes, you need go no farther than the pairing of "Collie Weed," from the Trojan Ganja Reggae box set and "Collie Dub" from In The Light/In The Light Dub, the first as light as a tropical breeze, the latter as dark as the skies just before a late summer Caribbean squall.

In Deep Cuts, Horace revisits a doo-wop classic, trowels on the heavy beats in dub versions of earlier hits, and more.

"Mister Wicked Dub" prowls through out of the speakers with the quiet menace of an alligator patrolling the mangroves, as Steel Pulse/Third World producer Godwin Logie steps behind the boards on Mek It Dub, the digital-only reconstruction of Andy's Mek It Bun album. In "The Bingy Man," the singer teams with the Mad Professor in a swampy mix of gospel and reggae, praising the Rastafarian Lion of Judah with a lyric from Handel's Messiah over a slinky Caribbean beat. And speaking of culture clash, who woulda thunk that a classic doo-wop song could translate so well into reggae? Obviously Andy did, because his cover of Jesse Belvin's "Good Night My Love" totally retools the sound, island style, while being faithful to the "last dance" spirit of the original.

Nobody sounds like Horace Andy. Imagine, if you will, that Little Jimmy Scott or Frankie Lymon had been born in Jamaica, rather than here in the States, and you begin to get the picture. But you just have to hear Andy to get a sense of how far to the left of the dial he is. Like many of his reggae compadres, he often recuts earlier versions of his hits, but unlike most of them, he manages to reinvent the tunes with each regrooving, inspiring arguments among the faithful about which (if any) version of a given song is "definitive." Above and beyond his straight reggae recordings, Horace Andy was exposed to an entirely new audience through his collaboration with British trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack, and he continues to bounce back and forth between his rootsy- and electro-flavored recordings with an effortless grace.