Full Blast

Cutty Ranks began rocking street-corner dances for soundsystems like Gemini and Rebel Tone while still a preteen and went on to become one of the most distinctive dancehall deejays of the early ‘90s. His work was notable not only for the mayhem-inspiring lyrical blasts of tunes like “Limb by Limb” and “Gun Man Lyrics” but also for its huge popularity in the U.K., where Ranks’ tunes were sampled ceaselessly by ragga and jungle producers looking to borrow the badman sound of an authentic dancehall don. 2012’s Full Blast comes after a six-year recording hiatus for Ranks, and it finds the legendary deejay experimenting with straight singing and cultivating a more roots-influenced sound nearly two decades after his years of fast-chat dancehall dominance. This more relaxed approach suits Ranks well, but it gives Full Blast something of a somber feel. Ranks sounds downright grim on the self-produced title track—a solemn meditation on ghetto violence—while elsewhere he revives the rambunctious, soundsystem-storming style of his golden years on “Rumble” and even makes tentative forays into lovers rock on “Inna Beauty."