Silver & Gold 1973-1979

Eleven years after its first release, British reissue label Blood and Fire (founded, curiously, by Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall) is still finding jaw-dropping material from the fertile Jamaican music scene of the ’70s. Silver & Gold: 1973-1979 spotlights the scorched-earth chanting of Prince Far I, a fiery proto-rapper with a gravelly delivery that sounds like Howlin’ Wolf after a few giant spliffs. Over a set of classic roots-reggae rhythms and dub tracks, he spits antiwar slogans and Rastafarian rhymes with the force of a hurricane.