Essential Roots Anthology shows Half Pint's musical mastery

Saturday, November 21, 2009 9:14 PM

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Friday, July 03, 2009

Artiste: Half Pint
CD Title: Essential Roots Anthology
Producers/Label: Half Pint Music, Essential Music Group

Singer Lindon Roberts, aka Half Pint, makes his musical mastery felt with his newest offering, Essential Roots Anthology, featuring a slew of hit songs from his extensive catalogue. It takes nothing less than a double disc option to give appreciative listeners a really good taste and feel of Lindon Roberts at his best. And this is what the Essential Roots Anthology is essentially about, reggae ambassador Half Pint at his very best.

Naturally, there are songs that are definite must-haves on a CD of this calibre, and Essential Roots Anthology appropriately kicks off with the Ragamuffin anthem, and a signature Half Pint tune, Greetings. This is followed by the infectious Poochie Lou and then another winner, Winsome, the song which has been covered by no less an international group than the Rolling Stones.

Regarded as one of reggae music's most prolific song-writers, this former choir boy at All Saints Primary School in downtown Kingston, is also rated as one of the genre's most-respected ambassadors and his on-stage performances have been descsribed as "electrifying". Last year toured with international acts Slightly Stoopid and, with the success of that tour, the singer joins them again this year, with a line-up which also includes Snoop Dogg.

Half Pint, so named because of his size (or lack thereof) rounds out Disc One with with none other than Mr Landlord, and in between come Mary Long Tongue, Loving, Victory, Sally (Pint's very first hit song), Don't Close the Door, Give Me Some Loving, If I Had A Hammer and Officer.

It poses quite a challenge to say which is the better of the two CD's as on Disc two are such gems as Substitute Lover, Level the Vibes, Political Fiction, Too Rude, One Big Family and Legal We Legal, all of which have garnered enviable chart accolades.

Completing Disc 2 are Cost of Living, Pass It On, Closer To You, Tell Me, One In A Million, Fever and Never Let Go.

- Yasmine Peru