The first noticeable thing about Popcaan’s fifth album Great Is He is that despite his extensive use of Patois which makes it markedly Jamaican, the 17-track album has only two Dancehall songs, and is largely a mix of R&B and Afrobeats.
With Dancehall riddims being only a minuscule feature of the project, it might be seen by purists as an enormous disservice to the genre, since Popcaan is oftentimes referred to as one of Dancehall’s biggest standard-bearers.
That said, if there is one admirable thing about Popcaan as a musician, it is the fact that he innately knows how to concoct catchy, memorable hooks, and come up with exceptional melodies.
Consequently, even though most of the verses of several of the songs are mundane, and are focused on the same old themes in prior songs – sex, sexy girls, wealth, jewellery, and fast cars — his melodies, the most important part of the songwriting process, work in the St Thomas native’s favor.
As for his two Dancehall songs on the album, they are rhythmic and catchy. Set It, which he dedicates to his “top girls” is laid on a 90-style Dancehall beat, where he commands them to wine and do raunchy things to him. It makes for a good addition to Dancehall selectors’ playlists.
So too, is New Benz, a track laid on an uptempo Dancehall beat, and in which Popcaan starts off like a boss, deejaying about his prowess with girls, his wealth, and rides the riddim with precision.
Nevertheless, creativity, regarded as one of the most important aspects of songwriting, appears to be missing in some instances, which makes some of the songs, frankly, forgettable, as the ideas are not new or unique or expressed in a compelling way, with metaphors, similes, etc. One exception to this is Popcaan’s very inventive 11th Commandment, his “addition” to the Biblical 10 Commandments revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai and “inscribed by the finger of God on two tablets.”
In this song’s hook and first verse, Popcaan scores lyrically, repeatedly warning his bonafides, and his women, that disloyalty is forbidden, declaring at intervals: “thou shalt not switch pan di dawgs dem.”
An effective album is expected to have a theme or central idea which is carried throughout its entirety, and this Popcaan does successfully, through his messages of rising out of a poor life to one of grandiosity.
Comments