Sly-Go-Ville

As half of Sly & Robbie, reggae music's most celebrated and widely-known bass-and-drums duo, Sly Dunbar is partially responsible for some of the greatest reggae recordings ever made. As a solo artist, he's solely responsible for some of the most boring (and sometimes downright fatuous) albums in the genre. Sly Go Ville, released originally on Island in 1982 and re-released on that label's Mango subsidiary in 1990, is one of his better efforts, though it still suffers from a surfeit of overlong, shapeless two-chord jams and half-formed funk reggae fusion. The Tabou1 reissue adds six bonus tracks to the original program of eight, the best of which is a hip-hop reggae version of the Yarbrough & Peoples classic "Don't Stop the Music." From the original program, standouts include a fun adaptation of "Battle of Jericho" and "If You Want It," which prefigures some of the better funk reggae Sly & Robbie would later produce on their Taxi label. Pretty much everything else fades into the background.