Back in 2012 I-Octane heavily r&b infused debut effort 'Crying To The Nation' had a hard time convincing yours truly, 2014 successor 'My Journey' from was completely ruined by Auto-Tune, and with 'Love & Life' the singer from Sandy Beach in Clarendon seems to persist in his ways. Quantity aplenty on 'Love & Life', as the track list counts no less than 19 tracks, featuring prominent guests like Shaggy, J Boog, Romain Virgo, Ginjah and Demarco to drum up some extra attention. Vocally there's nothing wrong with 'Love & Life', but musically speaking this is reggae and dancehall for amateurs of slick EDM and r&b. The computer driven riddims of songs like 'Love To See You Dance', the duet with Demarco, 'If You Think You're Lonely Now', a combination with Romain Virgo, the aptly titled 'I Don't Wanna Know', the collaboration with Shaggy, or absolute low point 'Heart Breaker', made us hit the skip button again and again. It would have been truly sad if all 19 tracks on 'Lova & Life' sucked, but fortunately for I-Octane this unbalanced also has a few decent tracks on offer: there's opener 'Up To We', a decent reality tune (and the same goes for closing track 'Weh Di Fire Gone', our personal favorite from the track list), and I-Octane's specialty, solid love tunes like 'Pretty Loud', a duet with J Boog, 'Let Me Love You', and the excellent 'When You're In Love'.