Words by Kieran K. Meadows—
This has been a pretty good year for music from Sizzla Kalonji. This spring, he dropped his latest LP, The Messiah, which included the stand-out lovers tune “Good Love”, which we premiered here in April. Now, he’s linked up with San Francisco-based label Muti Music for the forthcoming album called Born A King.
The first single off the project, “The Formula,” is packaged as part of a remix EP that will be officially released in the coming weeks.
As if new music from Sizzla is not enough to get your attention, the EP also contains versions from Capleton AND Anthony B. In other words, we’re talking about the Bobo Dread trinity of cultural singjays on this riddim: Sizzla, Capleton, and Anthony B — all sounding the best they’ve sounded in years, evoking memories of the late 90s/early 00s roots and culture era. Perhaps this is not surprising considering the biggest happening in Jamaican music this year has been its reggae revival movement (a movement embraced by Sizzla on the Kabaka/Chronixx/Protoje collaboration “Selassie Souljahz”)
The original version of “The Formula” finds Sizzla in tip-top form, playing off of back-and-forth accompanying vocals and simultaneously sultry and flowing lyrics from featured singer Vida Sunshyne of Melbourne, Australia. The danceable mid-tempo hip-hop riddim includes some tasteful South Asian/Desi vibes reminiscent of hit songs from the early 2000s. Along with its flirtatious content, the tune lands somewhere between the vibe of Sizzla’s Foxy Brown link-up, “Come Fly With Me” and Leftside’s C-4 riddim (which in 2003 also featured all three above-mentioned sing-jays).
As “The Formula” seems to hit all the right notes, we foresee that you’ll be hearing it in a club near you soon. And it’s truly a modern global collaboration, connecting Jamaica, the U.S., and Australia, as the riddim comes to us via one of Australia’s top reggae/dancehall producers, Mista Savona, who recently signed with Muti Music.
Stream “The Formula” and cop a free download of Capleton’s “Prove Them Wrong” below, pre-order the EP here, and sample the rest of the EP— Anthony B’s “Guns In Town” and a diverse, multi-genre gang of remixes—here.