Album Review by EDF
Damask is none other than Adedamola Lawal from Washington, DC. At one stage in his life, he moved back to his parent’s homeland, Nigeria for a decade. Influenced by his culture and artists such as Barrington Levy, Peter Tosh and Buju Banton, Damask produces himself within the genre of Dancehall Reggae. Damask has performed in clubs along the East Coast with relentless energy.
As for the tracks within this release, this will not gain Damask many new fans. Anyone who has come across ragga will be familiar with the unstructured attempts to rap over a reggae type beat. Here the music featured is mainly percussion driven with the odd sign of a bassline and not much else. Damask’s vocals at times sounds like the son of Shabba Ranks but at least Shabba had the autasity to make his records commercial.
Out of the nine tracks featured, there are two remixes, which means there are really only seven songs on this CD. Saying that, the two remixes are better than the original versions which suggest that given time Damask will come up with the goods. In the meantime, fans of Ragga just might get a kick out of this and the rest of us will scratch our heads wondering what the fuss is about.
