Black Stalin

There's more fun, which means room for choice, in Buster Poindexter's novelty "Hot Hot Hot" than in the coercive carnivalesque of Arrow's soca original. So what first attracted me to this Trinbago Rasta wasn't his antiparty politics, as in "Wait Dorothy Wait," whose verses list the panoply of injustices that will have to go before he can write verses to match the "smutty" chorus. It was the slackness of his music--his sun-warmed arrangements and smoker's baritone. Anyone resourceful enough to own his 1982 Caribbean Man will balk at repurchasing its seven best tracks. But the lyrics, notes, and remixes are all improvements, and so are the four later songs. Even "Dorothy" is eclipsed by "Burn Dem," in which he begs Saint Peter to let him throw down Christopher Columbus, Cecil Rhodes, and Margaret Thatcher himself. (Grade: A-)