Jon Carter's love of dancehall and ragga means Shoot the Boss comes with value-added extras you don't get on your everyday big beat album: rasta revolution and sound system imagery, echoey rimshots, and the biggest, double-fat basslines this side of a Jah Wobble record. Add it up and you've got a truly renegade vision of where dance music stands in 1998.
There's plenty to dance about here, and the album starts off with two floor-filling anthems. Opener "Make Jah Music" sounds like the Monkey Mafia manifesto, riding a mid-tempo hip-hop groove along a sinister analogue riff. Second track "Blow the Whole Joint Up" is actually as good as the title makes it sound, and features a cone-melting bassline and percussion like fireworks in a balloon factory. "I Am Fresh" adds Douge Reuben's chat to the mix, before "Lion in the Hall," "Steppa's Ball" and a scratch-a-thon mix of "Work Mi Body" push the pace past frantic.
Just when Shoot the Boss starts to sound like a one-dimensional party record, Carter downshifts to smoked-out dub for much of the album's mid-section. "Retreat Wicked Man" is a delicious piece of dancehall pop, and a technofied version of Creedence's "Long As I Can See the Light" ends things on a suitably idiosyncratic note. Ragga-obsessed club DJ covers country rock classic? Why not? Monkey Mafia are taking chances, and coming out on top.
If you like Monkey Mafia, check out:
Leftfield Leftism
Various Tougher than Tough: The Story of Jamaican Music
Various Live at the Social: Vol. 2 (Mixed by Jon Carter)
-- jf
