What? Oh blimey - it's Sean Paul!

Continuing my trip back through the 2003 album charts.

07/09/03 : Dutty Rock - Sean Paul

I'm very much not a fan of Sean Paul's kinda thang, but I have to admit I suspect there are far worse proponents of this kind of musical torture out there so I'm actually slightly intrigued as how tolerable this is.

Hmmm - I wouldn't say it's hateful and I do recognise there is some skill involved in it, but it is quite repetitive and often impossible to understand (to my delicate ears, anyway). I've also got no idea what I'm supposed to do with it - it doesn't feel very danceable and there doesn't seem enough content of interest to warrant actually listening to it. I also definitely didn't need 74 minutes of it - I'm just a bit perplexed by it all. And I'm definitely perplexed by whatever they're trying to achieve with "Dutty Rock Intro" - it's very odd indeed.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on his (wait for it) 21st week of an astonishing 47 week run, with this being as high as it got. The rest of the top five were a surprisingly diverse The Darkness, Eva Cassidy, a James Taylor best-of (a new entry) and Busted, with the next highest new entry being Abs (#29). Amusingly, given his recent #1 best-of album, Elton John is at #6 with a different best-of - one of eight different "greatest hits" albums he's charted with over the years.

Wikipedia tells me it's his second album and the version I was served up isn't the original version, which featured a load more skits - assuming they're in the style of "Dutty Rock Intro", I can assure you I didn't feel the need to search these out. The original version also didn't have the Beyoncé number on it - I'm sure this being a massive hit had nothing to do with the idea to re-release it :-) The critics were very nice about the album and recognise it as being instrumental in the breakout of dancehall music globally - I'll take their word for it. It also did very globally in places that don't seem obvious to me - #1 in Canada, #2 in Ireland and #4 in Norway, as well as #9 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Mr Vegas, Shaggy, Elephant Man and TOK - I'm currently fine with my limited knowledge of these artists, thank you. I'm fine if this is your sort of thing and I have to admit I was expecting it to be far worse than it was but it's certainly not something I feel the need for in my life, I'm afraid - and I can't for the life of me understand how it was so popular.

31/08/03 - Not sure why I thought I didn't like this
14/09/03 - More bearable than I was expecting