★★★★★
The first reggae musicians to win a Grammy, back in 1984, Black Uhuru were also the most progressive practitioners of the music in the early '80s, before electronics turned reggae into dancehall...
- www.blender.com
2010-08-22
★★★★★
This hasn't made itself felt the way Red did for fairly marginal reasons, hype/timing not least among them--the need for a new Marley becomes less urgent as the self-evident truth that there ain't gonna be one is absorbed. The musical margin is about urgency as well--not the quality of the riffs and riddims but rather the relative elegance, and detachment, or their execution...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Sinsemilla is a total masterpiece, originally released in 1980, but which somehow most of us managed to miss out on completely, until just recently. When we finally did hear it for the first time we knew this would be one of those lifer discs, a record that would never leave our collection, and that would get repeated play for years and years to come...
- aquariusrecords.org
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Junior Reid joins the group ululating in much the way Michael Rose did before he developed into a singer, and the big loss is even more crucial: politics, some rudimentary specificity. But up against the run of ridmic rhetoricians, they do fine. Both Reid and Duckie Simpson have a knack for rhetoric, and while Sly and Robbie should have pushed Simpson's "Reggae With Me" out on the dancefloor where it belongs, this is their most pyrotechnic production yet--they've brought Babylon back home.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Believe me, Michael Rose isn't trying to fill anybody's shoes--he'd probably rather not wear shoes. The ululation and ragged sense of line are pure country, like Jamaican field hollers; lots of times the songs don't even rhyme. But "Youth of Eglington" lets you know right off that this is a country boy who reads the papers, and with Rose pouring forth and Sly and Robbie rolling that rockers riddim, you don't really care that it never gets any better.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
With Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare drumming up your basic buzz and Ansel Collins's slyly dissonant piano flourishes catching the occasional fire, this sexually integrated Jamaican trio get up on music alone. But only the pan-Africanist theme songs "World Is Africa" and "No Loafing" get all the way over. Must reflect the special enthusiasms of the integrationist among them, who happens to be Babylonian born and raised.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
On Iron Storm, Black Uhuru is a ghost of its once-mighty self. The lyrics to songs like ''Bloodshed'' are still trenchant, but the spark is drowned in a slick pool of overproduction. ''Dance Hall Vibes'' listlessly panders to youth, and ''Tip of the Iceberg'' would do the same if the featured rapper weren't Ice-T. Dig up a copy of their Sinsemilla instead. C-...
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
By 1979 the 'classic' line up of Black Uhuru was ready to conquer the world. Derek "Duckie" Simpson and Michael Rose, who had been together with Errol Nelson since 1977 now formed a partnership with American social worker, Sandra "Puma" Jones. It was her sweet vocal addition to the heady mix that was to prove the turning point...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-06-12
★★★★★
Best of is an eleven-track sampling of the late-Seventies/early-Eighties glory years of the long-lived reggae group Black Uhuru, which combined the haunting, nasal voice and sharp songwriting of Michael Rose with the brawny rhythms and production savvy of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare.
...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
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