Anyone up for some nursery rhymes? How about a biblical passage? Well, Vanity has both!
Sugar Minott starts off by singing There is a message in what I've got to say to you. I always like to continue this lyric in my head by adding a brief 'listen to me now' prior to the first verse. It's on my 'things that songs could have had included that I would have appreciated' wish list. Well, now it's time for nursery rhyme story hour with Sugar:
Verse #1: Old King Cole, that merry old soul. He lost all his gold, and now he's crying a sea.
Verse #2: Humpty Dumpty, the big fat egg who fell off the wall. All of his friends couldn't put him back together, even with all their money.
Verse #3: Little Miss Mary, quite contrary...and filled with vanity, no doubt.
Verse #4 and #5: Jack and Jill. This one is a little confusing to me. I think Sugar sings about George and Jill going up Jack's hill to rob the dreadlocks of his fill. But he caught them, and now they are under the ground. See, he put a twist on it.
The message is - don't put your trust in vanity for it will let you down. And Sugar also warns about hoarding lots of wealth as he paraphrases Mark 10:25 from the Bible when he sings It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than the rich man to enter in the kingdom of Zion. Basically, just be real because this stuff matters on a cosmic level.
This is taken from the excellent compilation Respect to Studio One. The music bounces along merrily as any nursery rhyme should, complete with a significant dub break. Excellent bass lines, horns, whistling synth sounds, percussion.
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