Album: Beenie Man <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Undisputed, VIRGIN

It's always risky to proclaim one's unchallenged superiority, as antler-locking assertions of genre domination in the world of hip-hop invariably lead to sudden hubristic downfalls: LL Cool J was doing fine until he started to call himself The GOAT (Greatest Of All Time), and Will Smith seemed unstoppable until he claimed he was Born To Reign. Beenie Man, of course, operates in the less crowded arena of dancehall, and so has more justification to call himself The Undisputed Dancehall King; but there's a laziness here that might endanger that position, with even his machine-gun ragga scatting sounding complacent. By the time you reach the track actually called "Beenie Man" you've got the message and have probably had a bucketful of it. The album's not without merit - "Fire" has a chipper melodica groove, and "Chacka Dance", despite the cheesy synth version of the "Land of 1000 Dances" riff, has a delicious dancehall bounce - but Beenie Man might be well advised to follow his own advice in "Come Again" and "rip it up and mash it up again".

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Chacka Dance', 'Fire', 'Undisputed'