Dancehall not really being our field of expertise, yours truly, honestly thought never having to write a review of a Busy Signal album, but with 'Reggae Music Again', Busy signs for one of the biggest surprises of 2012. Gone are the dancehall riddims and accompanying rhetoric and instead, as the title suggests, it's time for 'Reggae Music Again'! For those who have followed Busy's career up close this will not come as a complete surprise; the covers of songs by Phil Collins and The Commodores on 2010's 'D.O.B.' were already in the line of this new album and in 2009 with Marcia Griffiths he recorded the beautiful 'Love Is Automatic' on the eponymous Automatic riddim. Busy seems well aware of the risk he runs as a dancehall artist releasing an album like this, so in the track list he included a number of interludes in which he explains his decision and in the extensive acceptance speech in the accompanying liner notes he asks his fans to stay true. On some tracks Busy depends quite heavily on Auto-Tune ('Running From The Law', although it's more Romain Virgo's doing there), but the majority of the songs on 'Reggae Music Again' are rock-solid; stronger even, with this album Busy signs for one of the strongest Jamaican releases of this year! The fact Signal surrounded himself with Robbie Lyn (keyboards), Dean Fraser (sax) and Kirk Bennett (drums), some of the best reggae musicians on the island, probably had something to do with that. '119' is a successful tribute to nineteen eighties dancehall with Anthony Red Rose echoing a Nitty Gritty or Tenor Saw, but the tracks that tickled our imagination most were 'Kingston Town', a dark tune introduced by a bunch of barking stray dogs, and 'Modern Slavery', a song inspired by the speeches of Marcus Garvey. No idea if this is the path Busy Signal wants to walk permanently from now on, but yours truly for one, wouldn't mind if he did.