I remember being at Sting 2006 when Buju Banton headlined and for two hours he performed hits from the past as well as songs from his recently released Too Bad (Gargamel Music). That album is arguably one of the greatest dancehall projects of all time and he returns to VP Records, 20 years later to recreate the time with a set aptly titled Too Too Bad.
Three decades after helping to define modern dancehall, Banton is intent on reconnecting with the swagger and sonic architecture of dancehall’s commercial peak. His last two world music sets Born For Greatness and Upside Down 2020 leaned heavily into experimentation.
Too Too Bad takes him back home and its ambitions are immediately apparent, but only if you choose to judge the album by its cover.
Designed as a homage to Kingston’s dancehall heyday, with hand-painted street flyer aesthetic used for legendary sound system sessions. A towering Banton measures up to a wall of speaker boxes in the background. Dressed in vivid red and gold, Banton stands at its centre. (Green in the shadows of his name)
It is ‘Dancehall Night,’ general admission is $5, much cheaper than his 2024 New York City concert tickets that went for as high as US$8000.
Too Too Bad, Banton returns to familiar lyrical territory: adversaries to defeat, women to seduce and declarations of his enduring stature within the genre. Such themes have long been part of dancehall’s vocabulary and Buju himself once delivered them with unmatched authority. Here, however, they arrive with diminishing returns. At 53, there is little reinterpretation, little reflection and few moments that suggest an artist still searching for new ideas.
Buju Banton has never lacked conviction. But listeners hoping to discover something new about the Gargamel, or to encounter the kind of searching introspection that elevated masterpieces such as ‘Til Shiloh and Too Bad, will come away disappointed. At his peak, Banton balanced righteous defiance with vulnerability, social commentary and spiritual inquiry. It was that rare combination that transformed him from an exceptional dancehall deejay into one of Jamaica’s defining recording artists. Too Too Bad seldom reaches those depths.
The production however, reinforces the sense of looking backwards. The liberties taken with classic dancehall rhythms such as Love Sponge, Buy Out and Diseases lack the reinterpretations that would confirm the freshness and longevity of 80s and 90s dancehall.
Eye 2 Eye, produced by Silent Addy and Disco Neil could have been his alley-oop as the riddim bridges the gap between the old and the new but Buju fantasies about a girl whose “body tight, look good and and smell right.” The example of what could come from that ridden is in Shake It To The Max.
Producers such as Donovan Germain and Dave Kelly, are the missing from this project. Buju has always thrived within those creative partnerships that refined his instincts without diluting his personality. Left largely to his own devices, nostalgia becomes the organising principle rather than the foundation for reinvention.
The result is an album that mistakes familiarity for momentum.
Across its opening ten tracks, Too Too Bad settles into a repetitive groove. Songs such as “Good Pum Pum”, “Like You” and “Wild Woman” (featuring DJ Khaled) are variations on the same idea. Rather than developing its themes or revealing new dimensions of Banton’s artistry, the album repeatedly returns to familiar territory until its considerable runtime begins to feel static.
This is particularly striking given Banton’s own public criticism of Afrobeats artists for, in his view, prioritising entertainment over social responsibility. Too Too Bad makes a similar claim to cultural importance simply by invoking dancehall’s past, yet it seldom articulates why this return matters in the present. More surprisingly, there is no obvious hit single or invention required to reassert Buju’s place at the centre of contemporary dancehall.
“Be Good” provides a rare moment of emotional release, its soulful cadence recalling the warmth and restraint of Beres Hammond. Together with “Satisfy Me”, featuring Ari Lennox, it offers a glimpse of a more nuanced and emotionally generous record, one that allows Banton’s voice to convey tenderness rather than bravado. The promise, however, is fleeting. “Heavy Hitters” swiftly restores the album’s familiar emphasis on bravado and self-mythology, and the opportunity for genuine introspection slips away.
For a younger artist, Too Too Bad might have been a competent exercise in traditional dancehall but for Buju Banton, the standard is necessarily higher. His catalogue established the benchmark against which others are measured. That history makes this album feel less like a creative statement than a missed opportunity.
There is no shame in revisiting one’s past but his challenge on album no. 13 is to make it fresh.
Too Too Bad never quite does.
★★★☆☆
Too Too Bad is released via VP Records/ Gargamel Music
