Sizzla "Black Woman and Child"

This was recently recommended to me and has pretty much revived my interest in reggae. Though I loved Marley throughout my younger years, there's really only so much you can take and I never got much exposure beyond him.

Sizzla offers an instrumentation that relies more on synthesizers and drum machines; something I once thought to be blasphemous in reggae - as though I held any stake in that tradition. Despite my intuitions, I'm amazed at how authentic and fluid a sound he achieves.

His lyrical content is devoutly Rastafarian which at first I, somewhat naively, found intriguing. However, I recently learned that he's sung some pretty despicably homophobic things (on other albums) which has put me on the fence about his music. It's hard to place that sort of attitude within his other themes of peace and self-empowerment. Is it possible to pick out only what one can ethically stomach? A lot of second wave feminists are Kantians despite the fact that Kant didn't believe women were fully human.

Canada and the UK have gone as far as to ban Sizzla from performing all together, which I wouldn't want to debate. I read in Time that he along with other reggae musicians subsequently signed what was called the "reggae compassionate act," which asserted the right of gays and lesbians to live without fear of violence - though all of their motives are questionable. Regardless of this, his music is worth a listen if you're interested in what's happening in Jamaica these days.