When you pick up a release bearing Lee Perry's name, it's often uncertain as to whether Perry is the featured performer, the producer, or wears different hats on different tracks. This is refreshingly coherent, straightforward, and well-documented for such a compilation: Perry is the singer/featured performer on all of the material, and the 18 cuts are clearly marked as emanating from 1968-1978, presented in chronological order. As such, it's a good representation of Perry's work as singer/artist, and not just producer. Although Perry was not a conventionally strong vocalist, he more than compensated for that with a screwball humor second to none in reggae music, as well as expert use of sound effects such as crying babies, evanescent echo, and soundtrack-like dialogue. Mooing cows all but overwhelm 1973's "Cow Thief Skank," in tandem with unfathomable raps and chord changes that sound like they've been spliced in from a different record altogether. It's the zaniest effort here, and, therefore, about as zany as anything in popular music. Even when he was not as avowedly strange, he was unflaggingly creative, whether covering the Chi-Lites' "Justice to the People" (again with crying baby effects), moving into Rasta statements, or creating an otherworldly bath of rattling percussion, despairing vocal cries, and disorienting reverb on 1978's "City Too Hot." ~ Richie Unterberger|

Rovi