The latest installment in the VP label's
Riddim Driven series of one-rhythm albums finds all the usual suspects (
Vybz Kartel,
Elephant Man,
Bounty Killer, etc.) gathering around a dark and minimalist backing track provided by the production and DJ team of Lefside and
Esco. "Dem Time Deh" is built on a hard, almost soca-flavored three-against-two drum pattern that is garnished intermittently by smears of minor-key synthesizer chords. Taken by itself, it doesn't seem like the most inspiring rhythm, but it seems to have brought out the best in several of the contributing DJs.
Sean Paul gets things off to a rollicking start with his energetic and clever "All-Out," and
Vybz Kartel follows up with an uncharacteristically subdued and almost (but not quite) introspective track titled "No." Then things fall into a predictable rut of cookie-cutter slackness, with occasional bursts of minor brilliance: Lefside and
Esco's "Negative" offers a clever riff on sexually-transmitted diseases, while
Wayne Marshall's "Astronaut" delivers similarly clever wordplay on a less-than-inviting sexual topic.
Esco's "No Caine" offers the usual Jamaican hypocrisy in regard to drug use (by "drugs," he means anything other than the drugs he likes, most notably the one pictured on the back cover), while Lefside's "Whoa" and
Future Troubles' "Fambo" offer little more than the usual chest-beating slackness. There are some above-average musical moments here, but not enough of them to outweigh the mediocre and unoriginal ones. ~ Rick Anderson