Sugar Minott: Hard Time Pressure

Sugar Minott was a melodious-voiced bridging artist between roots and dancehall with big hints of lovers rock in his work.

This compilation includes two hours plus of Minott's pleasurable grooves and its highlights are the huge lovers rock hit, the Motown cover Good Thing Going (first done by Michael Jackson on his 1972 Ben album), Hard Time Pressure and rootsy hangovers like River Jordan and the beautifully bassy Babylon. Good Thing Going has so many memories of 1981 for me.

Even a righteous song like Never Gonna Give Jah Up sounds like a lovers crooner, though. Minott had a lightness of delivery and sound that differed from the deeper roots artists of the mid-late seventies, providing a definite pointer forward to the light tones of lovers rock. Along with dancehall, lighter lovers rock sounds were very much the thing in the early eighties.

Minott could also do roots, however, and in 1979 - having become a Rasta as so many reggae singers did - he released two distinctly roots albums - Black Roots and Ghetto-ology. Several of the tracks from the above compilation appear on these albums too (Hard Time Pressure, River Jordan etc). They are very much in the style of the whole 1976-79 roots sound, both musically and lyrically. 

As I said earlier (I know I'm repeating myself here, but it is notable), Minott's voice is light enough to render the material more accessible than perhaps that of some other gruffer-voiced rootsers was. A bit like his contemporary Cornel Campbell, he made roots sound like lovers rock!