Top Class Brokeness Riddim – Various Artists

Top Class Brokeness has that raw, stripped-down dancehall feel where the kick drum and bass do most of the talking, leaving plenty of room for the artists to spit grimy one-liners over a lean, street-level groove. Jaffa’s “Fuck Up Mi Life” is the sharpest cut in the little three-track set, with Da Tshad’s “Gyal Dem” and Sadyk’s “Trop Ay Ay Ay” keeping the pressure on in different shades of badness. Even with only three vocals, the 2012 release feels like it came out of a producer corner that wasn’t chasing polish so much as attitude, a little rougher around the edges than the more crowded party riddims from that period. It sits neatly in the year’s dancehall run as one of those compact, no-frills projects that lands and gets out.