| Rebirth | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 16 July 2012 | |||
| Recorded | The Sound Factory, May/June/November 2011, Canyon Hut, December 2011 | |||
| Genre | Reggae | |||
| Length | 46:06 | |||
| Label | Universal/Sunpower/Hip-O | |||
| Producer | Tim Armstrong | |||
| Jimmy Cliff chronology | ||||
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Rebirth is an album by reggae artist Jimmy Cliff released in July 2012. It won the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album and was included in Rolling Stone 's '50 Best Albums of 2012'.
Rebirth was Cliff's first new album in eight years. [1] The album was recorded at The Sound Factory and Canyon Hut in California, and produced by Tim Armstrong of Rancid and featured backing band The Engine Room. [2] [3] Some of the songs were written by Cliff before the recordings sessions, while others were written by Cliff and Armstrong in the studio. [2] Rebirth also includes cover versions of The Clash's "Guns of Brixton" (the lyric of which refers to Cliff's role in The Harder They Come ), Joe Higgs' "World Upside Down", and Rancid's "Ruby Soho". [4] [5] [6] The album was mastered by Joe LaPorta. [7]
Rebirth was released in July 2012. [8]
Cliff said of the album: "It is a rebirth of my career at this time. I have goals yet to accomplish, and I think this album is the stepping stone toward those goals.". [2] He also said that the title referred to the rebirth of the planet. [9] It also reflected a return to the music from earlier in his career, with Cliff saying:
"As a rebirth one has to go back to point zero to move forward again. We recorded the music with the same instruments that we had used back in the days, the same style that we used to record, which is everyone recording at the same time." [9]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  [10] |
Rolling Stone gave the album four stars out of five, with Will Hermes describing it as "the strongest case for the vitality of West Indian roots music that anyone has made in decades" and calling it "the sound of history circling in wondrous ways". [4] The BBC commented on his return to the sound of his recordings from the 1960s and 1970s, describing the album as "remarkably consistent". [11] Alternative Press gave it 4.5/5, picking out "Cry No More" and "Children's Bread" as sounding like "lost classic[s] of late-'60s/early-'70s Jamaica", going on to call it "a flawless album". [12] The Independent gave it four stars out of five, saying "the spirit of the music is vivid". [13]
Pitchfork Media rated the album 7.5 out of 10, with reviewer Erin McLeod describing it as "predominantly a pitch-perfect versioning of 1970s reggae". [3] PopMatters gave it 9 out of 10, describing it as "the sound of a man finally getting back to living life to its fullest". [14] AllMusic's David Jeffries gave it 5 stars out of 5, calling it "a return to form". [10]
The album won a Grammy Award in the 'Best Reggae Album' category. [15]
Rebirth was listed at number 12 in Rolling Stone's '50 Best Albums of 2012', the album described as a "warm, wondrous album that plays like a guided tour of the island's musical past, as well as Cliff's own". [5] It was also included at number 48 in a similar list from ABC News. [8]
Rebirth reached number one on the Billboard Top Reggae Albums chart and number 76 on the Billboard 200. [16] It peaked at number 83 in the UK Albums Chart. [17]
By December 2012 the album had sold 33,000 copies in the United States. [8]
Rancid is an American punk rock band formed in Berkeley, California in 1991. Founded by Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman, former members of the band Operation Ivy, Rancid is often credited as being among the wave of bands that revived mainstream interest in punk rock in the United States during the mid-1990s. Over their 32-year career, Rancid retained much of its original fan-base, most of which was connected to its underground musical roots.
Billie Joe Armstrong is an American musician who is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of the rock band Green Day, which he co-founded with Mike Dirnt in 1987. He is also a guitarist and vocalist for the punk rock band Pinhead Gunpowder, and provides lead vocals for Green Day's side projects Foxboro Hot Tubs, The Network, The Longshot and The Coverups. Armstrong has been considered by critics as one of the greatest punk rock guitarists of all time.
James Chambers OM, known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living reggae musician to hold the Order of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by the Jamaican government for achievements in the arts and sciences.
Let's Go is the second studio album by the American punk rock band Rancid. It was released on June 21, 1994, through Epitaph Records and was the band's first album to feature Lars Frederiksen on guitar and vocals. The album initially achieved little mainstream success, though it appealed to the band's fanbase. However, the surprise success of punk rock bands such as The Offspring, Green Day and Bad Religion in the mid-1990s brought forth more mainstream interest in Let's Go, and it peaked at number 97 on the Billboard 200. "Salvation" was released to alternative radio on February 3, 1995.
Rancid is the fifth studio album by the American punk rock band Rancid, released on August 1, 2000. It is the second eponymous album and the first to be released through frontman Tim Armstrong's label, Hellcat Records. It also features the return of producer Brett Gurewitz, who has produced every subsequent album by the band.
Timothy Ross Armstrong is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. Known for his distinctive voice, he is the singer/guitarist for the punk rock band Rancid and hip hop/punk rock supergroup Transplants. Prior to forming Rancid, Armstrong was in the ska punk band Operation Ivy.
The Maytals, known from 1972 to 2020 as Toots and the Maytals, are a Jamaican musical group, one of the best known ska and rocksteady vocal groups. The Maytals were formed in the early 1960s and were key figures in popularizing reggae music.
Life Won't Wait is the fourth studio album by the American punk rock band Rancid. It was released on June 30, 1998 through Epitaph Records. It was released as the follow-up to ...And Out Come the Wolves (1995).
Joseph Benjamin Higgs was a reggae musician from Jamaica. In the late 1950s and 1960s he was part of the duo Higgs and Wilson together with Roy Wilson. He was a popular artist in Jamaica for four decades and is also known for his work tutoring younger musicians including Bob Marley and the Wailers and Jimmy Cliff.
Frederick Nathaniel Hibbert,, better known as Toots Hibbert, was a Jamaican singer and songwriter who was the lead vocalist for the reggae and ska band Toots and the Maytals. A reggae pioneer, he performed for six decades and helped establish some of the fundamentals of reggae music. Hibbert's 1968 song "Do the Reggay" is widely credited as the genesis of the genre name reggae. His band's album True Love won a Grammy Award in 2005.
Marcus Garvey is the third album by reggae artist Burning Spear, released in 1975 on Fox Records in Jamaica and then internationally on Island Records later in the year. The album is named after the Jamaican National Hero and Rastafari movement prophet Marcus Garvey. A dub version of it was released four months later as Garvey's Ghost.
Clive Hunt is a Jamaican reggae multi-instrumentist, arranger, composer and producer.
"The Guns of Brixton" is a song by the English punk rock band the Clash, originally released on their 1979 album London Calling. It was written and sung by bassist Paul Simonon, who grew up in Brixton, South London. The song has a strong reggae influence, reflecting the culture of the area and the reggae gangster film The Harder They Come.
The Skatalites are a ska band from Jamaica. They played initially between 1963 and 1965, and recorded many of their best known songs in the period, including "Guns of Navarone." They also played on records by Prince Buster and backed many other Jamaican artists who recorded during that period, including Bob Marley & The Wailers, on their first single "Simmer Down." They reformed in 1983 and have played together ever since.
Wayne Jobson, also known as Native Wayne, is a Jamaican record producer of European ancestry. He has worked with such artists as No Doubt, Gregory Isaacs and Toots & the Maytals. He hosts the weekly radio show "Alter Native" every Sunday afternoon on Indie 103.1. He previously hosted a similar radio show, "Reggae Revolution", at Indie's main competitor KROQ-FM. Jobson is also known as a musician. He recorded an album in 1977 produced by Lee 'Scratch' Perry at the Black Ark.
Aimee Allen is an American singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, California. She is currently the lead vocalist for the ska-punk band the Interrupters under the moniker Aimee Interrupter. As a singer-songwriter, she has collaborated with Mark Ronson, Sublime with Rome, Tim Armstrong of Rancid, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Linda Perry, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Jimmy Cliff, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Travis Barker, Dirty Heads, and Tom Morello.
"The Harder They Come" is a reggae song by the Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff. It was first recorded for the soundtrack of the 1972 movie of the same name, in which it is supposed to have been written by the film's main character, Ivanhoe Martin.
Cliff Hanger is an album by Jimmy Cliff, released in 1985 through CBS Records. In 1986, the album won Cliff the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Recording.
Tim Timebomb is a music project by Tim Armstrong, best known as a member of the punk rock band Rancid. Armstrong has recorded a large number of songs – a mixture of cover versions, including Rancid covers, and original songs, including some tracks from his musical film project RocknNRoll Theater – with a variety of supporting musicians.
Kevin Bivona is an American multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer best known for his work with Tim Armstrong's various musical projects, particularly the Transplants and Rancid. He is currently the guitarist for the ska punk band the Interrupters.
