He had a number one in the British singles chart as Blu Cantrell’s sidekick and worked with Beyonce on the track ‘Baby Boy’. A star in his own right, Shaggy’s heir apparent is back with a reggae infused track. is the pied piper of the summer’s day. His frenetic lyrics hypnotise while the easy, sublime reggae beats cause heads to nod and feet to tap. While the Radio Edit version might simply greet the ear with a “party-all-night-long” reason for living, the explicit version of the single betrays the secret and exposes the truth. It’s in the second track that you find out precisely what they are burning. ‘We Be Burnin’ is a Rastafarian anthem; the pulse of the cause. takes his cue from the late Bob Marley and one can only assume that the wrath of the right wing in the UK and beyond forced those behind the production of this record to cloak the song in a blanket of enigma.
‘We Be Burnin’ does suffer from the fact that playing it in the midst of a background of gale force winds and rain [i.e. the winter] might cause a haemorrhage as the brain fails to cope with the dichotomy between the Jamaican vibe of the music and the intense chill of the outside. We Be Burnin’ is a song of one season only. It’s surrender to summer. Bringing an altogether different interpretation to the intense pleasure one can obtain from herbal essences, We Be Burnin may prove ’s talent and superstar potential and it may make a brave, bold, brilliant political statement in the process, but once its time has passed the single turns to dust and scatters under the touch of the wind. The single packs one hell of a punch. But it’s still not enough to break down the wall.
Rating: 4/5
Release Date: 12th September 2005.
Record Company: Atlantic Recordings/Warner Music
Words By: Martin Drury
