Imitation Riddim – First Name Music

First Name Music’s Imitation Riddim lands in that early-2000s reggae pocket where the rhythm does the heavy lifting and the voices have to find their own angle around it. The lineup is a strong one, with Burro Banton snapping into the stark warning of “The System, ” George Nooks keeping things uplifted on “Keep It Up, ” and Junior Kelly and Nadine Sutherland both circling the wise-man message of “Be Wise” from different ends of the spectrum. Queen Ifrica’s “Rude Buoy” and Spragga Benz’s “No Gun Ting” give the set a little more bite, while the version cut closes the circle in the usual tidy way. There’s a slightly bare, echo-chamber feel to the whole thing, which suits the title and the era, right down to the kind of singer-to-singer contrasts that make these 2004 jugglings fun to dig through.