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Liberator 6.3
Leroy Smart
The Best of Leroy Smart

I got hip to King Tubby in the mid-nineties and on all of the records I owned of his there was this voice. King Tubby's ferocious dubs are haunting enough but there was this voice, fading quickly in and back out again for the rest of the record. I looked through all the liner notes I could actually find and came up with a name, Leroy Smart. I picked up The Best of Leroy Smart and have not stopped playing it since. Leroy Smart is another product of Kingston Jamaica's Alpha boys school, a catholic school where the nuns pushed music heavily on the students and ended up producing some of reggae music's finest talents. He's never had any international or crossover hits over the course of his 30-plus year career but has managed to keep the respect of his fans and fellow reggae artists. Smart does not have a good singing voice in the conventional sense but when he opens up his mouth all you hear is conviction. Whether he is wailing about his lost love on "Sharon" or saying fuck it on "Wish you good luck", Mr. Smart means what he says and you know it, the same way you could look at Mike Tyson and tell he's got some squabble in him. The Best of Leroy Smart is a compilation put together at Kingston's Channel One records, it features re-recorded versions of 15 of his most popular songs, with legends like Sly + Robbie, Tommy McCook, and Ansel Collins backing him playing some of reggae's classic rhythm for Leroy to holler his heart out on. The Best of Leroy Smart is one of the best reggae records ever released. In "Babylon don't like Dreadlocks" Mr. Smart belts out that while Babylon hates him he can do nothing but stand firm in his belief in both God and his right to self preservation. "Jah Jah" makes fine use of Jackie Mitto's classic "hot milk" rhythm, he hollers "you better try/ think about some life/ cause every day cost of living getting high/ try and be a man of tomorrow and try and show your parents what you can do." Leroy Smart, without any international success, is and was hugely influential on a younger generation of reggae artists and helped pave the way and develop a sound that has reached around the world. The best of Leroy Smart is in incredible introduction to a man and his music.
(Amahl Grant)