Search - Turbulence :: Notorious

Rushed, Hurried but Not Bad

Achis | Kingston, JA/Philipsburg, SxM | 05/13/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"(3.5 stars)

26 year old Sheldon Campbell has made a fan out of me. His style of making music has gotten to me over the years and from the first time I heard the artist, when I would essentially just tag him a Sizzla clone and be done with it, he has improved his style drastically. Always gifted with the pen, and still retaining many of his Sizzla-like oddities, Turbulence is able to hold the attention of both the hard dancehall seeking fan and especially the smooth lover's rock fan.



For years his career was labeled in a way that many of his contemporaries are. He had voiced tons of good solid tunes and high quality albums, but he had never had that one big tune that would set him apart from the rest, combined with the fact that he had announced himself leaving the role of Sizzla's frontman/sidekick, he needed that one big tune.



Enter his girlfriend and Notorious. Feisty songstress Sasha would make an unlikely combination with Turbulence, leading to 2 good tunes, one of which was a big hit, Want a Natty, which is available here. Notorious was even bigger, the artist's firts number one tune took him all over the Caribbean where fans feasted on it.



So here you have the long awaited album, so I and many other reviewers can stop wondering exactly when the tune might appear on an album. VP Records go out of their way to showcase the record, it is redone (even from their own StB) and cut as never before. Its still good enough to be the album's best, coming in second is unsurprisedly Want a Natty (aka Front Line) featuring Sasha. The two could presumably work together dozens of times and never have a dip in quality.



Also good here is much of the dancehall material of the second half of the album. Run Away, Woyeee, and Nah Run all pretty good tunes, especially Run Away Surprisingly, for a Turbulence album, there are no big big love songs on the album after Want a Natty, the artist has shown himself undoubtedly one of the best practitioners of the craft of the love song in recent times.



The album is largely produced by Israeli reggae master Piloni who may be best known with artist Jah Mason, and his riddims are top notch throughout. It is a slightly rushed and flimsy project however, the picures for this one (including the covershot) are all pictures from the liner notes of the Songs of Solomon album, its most immediate VP Records' predecessor.



Overall, I wouldn't necessarily call Notorious Turbulence's worst album (that distinction belongs to Sons of Solomon) but its not the absolute top notch piece that we might expect from the 'Future'. Yes, he can do much much better, but fans of the artist will probably find enough goodness here to more than justify purchase."

Almost the perfect reggae album

Negus Shabaka | Brooklyn, NY USA | 04/19/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"To me, this was ALMOST the perfect album, but a few production "mistakes" kept this from being a classic. Firstly, why mess with a good thing? "Notorious" is THE biggest song of Turbulence's career so why did these producers mess with it. Now, the song is less energetic than the original production. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. Secondly, I could have done without those slow ballad type love songs. I mean going from "I could have been one of the most notorious..." to "I'm sorry I cheated..." kind of threw me off there for a sec. But all in all, this is the best produced and best engineered Turbulence album I've heard. The music itself is well written and most of the lyrics are fulfilling. Turbulence seemed to have experimented with some pop compositions like the #5 track "I'm Yours" and there are some tuff "rasta gunman" tunes (which could be some kind of contradiction to some ppl). You can also hear some Sizzla influence here and there in his vocal performance. I wouldn't really call this a roots album nor would I call it a dancehall album. Maybe it's contemporary reggae?"