Shaggy

No. You've got it wrong. Mr. Shaggy is the global reggae and pop crossover king. It's Buju who is the homophobic asshole.

The new album from Shaggy has 16 tracks, plus an enhanced video portion. The enhanced portion is vital, because without the videos to "Dance & Shout" and the ridiculously boastful single "It Wasn't Me," wherein Shaggy pushes forward the case for young black males to cheat on their partners as acceptable and indeed desirable, you wouldn't appreciate quite how popular Shaggy and his cheater friends are with the ladies. Indeed, cheating on the ladies seems to make one far more attractive to the ladies. Why, in almost every frame, there is a young woman shaking her tush or standing aggressively in front of an appreciative male, or dressed in tight black leather tracking down her man?who escapes, natch?in true post-Charlie's Angels postfeminist style. (Thanks, Drew.)

The fast-forward button comes in real handy on the DVD player of your post-insurrectionary iMac here: not only does it speed up the music in amusing Chipmunks fashion, but it also serves to cut out any pretense the videos have at telling a (rudimentary) story. You may think that having 16 tracks is pushing the boundaries of formulaic, watered-down dancehall reggae too far. You'd be right. Not only does most of this record feature an excruciatingly mediocre cross-genre fertilization of raga and r&b, but among the hour's worth of music here, there isn't a single track possessed of the boombastic charm of "Oh Carolina."

Mr. Shaggy has matured: he has turned into everyone else. An hour's worth of music?you know, there's a wonderful 60s album called An Hour with Nina Simone. Style for style, content for content, Hot Shot should last 60 seconds. And that's being generous.

You always have to be wary of artists bragging how they're "Keepin' it Real" or asking "Why Me Lord?" especially if the latter track actually asks us to remember Him Above. Still, this song and "Joy You Bring" are two of the few to retain Shaggy's previously peerless humor, with groovy gospel flavors, funk bass-heavy beats and smart self-deprecating rhymes that show the rest of this album up for the (hair) oil slick it is. Persevere, and after 40 minutes Hot Shot becomes acceptable, or maybe all resistance is worn down.

Shaggy! Not so boombastic at all. A shame.