Sly and Robbie Present Taxi is an album by the Jamaican musical duo Sly and Robbie, released in 1981.[1][2] It was their first album as a credited duo, with many of the tracks first released on their Taxi record label.[3][4]Sly and Robbie Present Taxi is dedicated to the Jamaican musician General Echo, who was killed in 1980.[5]
Sly and Robbie recorded the drums and bass first, often tinkering with the tracks until they sounded as if they could have been created by a computer.[6] The duo had verbal agreements with most of the artists on their label, dividing with them whatever profits a song made and putting their share back in to recording.[6] The U.S. Mango release includes Sheila Hylton's cover of the Police's "The Bed's Too Big Without You" and omits Black Uhuru's "World Is Africa".[7] "Smiling Faces Sometimes" is a cover of the Undisputed Truth version of the Motown composition.[8] "My Woman's Love" was written by Curtis Mayfield.[7] General Echo's "Drunken Master" is a tribute to the martial arts film.[9]
The Northern Echo labeled the album "neat Jamaican dance music".[17]Bedfordshire on Sunday praised the "dynamic" production team, and, alluding to Bob Marley's recent death, noted, "The Lion sleeps but the jungle still stirs."[4]Newsday said that "each cut is meticulously crafted, featuring soulful singing and Dunbar and Shakespeare's characteristically solid, flexible rhythms."[8] The Los Angeles Times stated that "this is reggae-as-Jamaican-pop-music, with love as the principal theme."[18]Robert Christgau noted that these "love songs are why Jah made syndrums: reggae as pure pop".[11]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
[13]