Fantan Mojah - Hail The King (2005)

The debut album from this young roots-and-culture singer is an impressive, if imperfect, effort from a promising new talent. Mojah keeps things strictly conscious on Hail the King, with songs praising Ras Taffari and righteous women while calling out all the usual suspects (political corruption, poverty, venal Babylon, etc.). He has a formidable array of hot rhythms to work with from various producers, including the Black and White crew (who provide the backing for one of the album's finest songs, a combination track with Jah Cure titled "Nuh Build Great Man") and Ray Stephen and Ricky Genius (who lend similarly powerful backing to the excellent dancehall-roots fusion of "Don't Bow Out"). Other highlights include the relentlessly churning "Hungry" and the title track, a Nyabinghi-flavored praise anthem. The only fly in this rich ointment is Mojah's singing, which is consistently slightly flat and sometimes (as on the awful "Murderer") painfully so. The problem isn't his voice per se -- he has a nice, chesty baritone and he uses it with confidence and intelligence. It's his pitch, which he doesn't seem able to completely control. Training and practice should help with that problem, so there's good reason to hope that future Fantan Mojah albums will be even better than this one, which is generally quite enjoyable even with its flaws.~ Review by Rick Anderson