Brass Trax

Roots reggae ground breakers Black Uhuru existed, in name at least, before Michael Rose joined, but it was Rose’s honeyed voice and lyrical deftness that would come to define the band. By 1977, two of the original members of Black Uhuru had split—Garth Dennis had left to join the Wailing Souls and Don Carlos had left to become a solo artist—leaving Derrick Simpson to recruit new talent. When he found Michael Rose, he began to suspect that Black Uhuru could be big.

The first album Rose recorded with Simpson, Love Crisis (1977), proved to be the act’s audition tape. Recorded with Prince Jammy, with Errol “Tarzan” Nelson singing harmony, it was an impressive album, a hefty dose of Rastafari righteousness, but it didn’t sell many copies. The vocals sounded fantastic, the lyrics reflected the apocalyptic atmosphere of Jamaica in 1977, but Black Uhuru’s formula wasn’t quite complete. There was something missing.

By the time the band returned to the studio in 1980, with an Island Records contract in hand, Michael Rose had figured out what it lacked. Rose recruited Sly and Robbie, the production duo, to provide Black Uhuru’s backing rhythms, and the so-called “rhythm twins” did not disappoint. The resulting album, Sinsemilla, became Black Uhuru’s breakout record, its finest recording, and one of Sly and Robbie’s greatest accomplishments.

Although Black Uhuru was technically a trio—American social worker Sandra “Puma” Jones had replaced Nelson—Sinsemilla is essentially a collaboration between Rose and Sly and Robbie. Rose wrote all the songs, sang lead, and, at least by his own account, sang harmony as well. “When we a record Sinsemilla,” Rose said, “[Jones] wasn’t there for some reason. I was the one that sang the harmony on the Sinsemilla album.” It’s not a claim we would bet our lives on—the track “There is a Fire” sure sounds like it has female vocals—but it underscores the extent to which Sinsemilla really is Michael Rose’s album.


The songs are a mixture of devotionals to Jah, Apartheid protest songs, and celebrations of marijuana—typical roots topics for the period—but oddly, not a single track about Jamaica’s political situation, which might have had something to do with Island guru Chris Blackwell’s plan to market the group internationally. The next Bob Marley, in three part harmony. Nonetheless, the album is striking in the extent of its break with previous forms of reggae.

For one thing, Black Uhuru’s music is faster than other reggae. For another, it relies on Sly and Robbie’s four-on-the-floor rhythm, the “rocker’s” style, which contrasts so clearly with the more syncopated “one drop” beat, where all the emphasis is on the one. The result is a music that sounds more like fusion, and many of the digital effects that the rhythm twins add to the album could come straight from a New York disco. (The fact that the title track got a disco remix should not be surprising.)

And then there’s Rose’s “Waterhouse style.” The name comes from the part of Kingston that Black Uhuru called home. It’s a vocal style that is uniquely suited to Rose’s voice, combining clear-throated singing, with an exacting pronunciation, with a drawling, raspy wail. It’s easy for a foreigner to follow—you don’t need any Jamaican patwah to parse Rose’s lyrics—but his voice still shares something with the Rastafari countryman, a blunted, visionary quality.

The Waterhouse style is on display in “World is Africa,” a unity song that delves into plate tectonics, the corruption of money, and the redemptive power of music. The “whole world is Africa,” Rose wails over a bramble of psychedelic guitar licks, “but it’s divided into continent states.” Since Pangaea, everything has been downhill, as “too much brutality” has riven humanity. For Rose, the fact that the world used to be fused into a single continent is a pungent metaphor for equality and justice. Considering that, perhaps it should come as no surprise that, according to one study, many Americans don’t believe that the world ever was one continent.

Listen to “World is Africa”

“Push Push,” a song about “the leaf of life,” that is to say marijuana, rides a rhythmic rail forged by electric piano and Robbie’s deep, almost colorless bassline, decorated with splashes of synthesizer squall. By the end of the song, Rose has explored issues of religion, slavery, political indifference, and the European “shitstem”—a Rastifari pun on “system”—that enslaved millions.

Listen to “Push Push”

At the time, no roots reggae album was complete without a denunciation of Apartheid, and “No Loafing (Sit and Wonder)” serves that role. Rose sings that he “is going to sit on my ass and wonder what to do.” The solution to Apartheid isn’t forthcoming, but Rose does remind us that the people of South Africa “need more loving.”

Listen to “No Loafing”

“Sinsemilla,” the title track, is unabashed in its theme. Marijuana. “I’ve got a stalk of sinsemilla growing in my backyard,” Rose wails. The song is about a drug dealer, who faces persecution “for the little herb I’m selling,” which, after all, is the only thing that makes living in a wicked system bearable. “I and I don’t cherish wickedness because it’s nonprofit to I and I,” says Rose’s pusher cum economic man. “Anything that is nonprofit, I and I no take for it.”

Built on a rock solid Sly and Robbie beat, the song is a killer. But its portrayal of the Jamaican weed trade is somewhat misleading. If only all the pot pushers in Jamaica had been friendly singers who grew herb in their backyard. Unfortunately, the marijuana trade was the profit center for the island’s vicious gangs, and peace rarely came from a pot sale, regardless of the drug’s effect on the buyer.

The album’s closer, the sublime “Vampire,” is the broadest denunciation of the Babylon system. “What a sight to see,” Rose sings, “a vampire,” which, naturally, will find itself chased away by the almighty Jah. Regardless of your religious beliefs, the warbling synthesizer line and repetitive piano patterns will break down your skepticism and make you root for Jah, if only this once.

Listen to “Sinsemilla”
Listen to “Vampire”

Sinsemilla didn’t quite make Black Uhuru the next Bob Marley, but it represented a more thorough stylistic advance than Marley’s music did. Rose, Sly, and Robbie wrote the introductory paragraph to the next chapter of roots reggae with a bass, a synthdrum, and a wail.

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