Popcaan: ‘Great Is He’ Album Review

The first noticeable thing about Popcaan’s fifth album Great Is He is that despite his extensive use of Patois which makes it markedly Jamaican, the 17-track album has only two Dancehall songs, and is largely a mix of R&B and Afrobeats.

With Dancehall riddims being only a minuscule feature of the project, it might be seen by purists as an enormous disservice to the genre, since Popcaan is oftentimes referred to as one of Dancehall’s biggest standard-bearers.

That said, if there is one admirable thing about Popcaan as a musician, it is the fact that he innately knows how to concoct catchy, memorable hooks, and come up with exceptional melodies. 

Consequently, even though most of the verses of several of the songs are mundane, and are focused on the same old themes in prior songs – sex, sexy girls, wealth, jewellery, and fast cars — his melodies, the most important part of the songwriting process, work in the St Thomas native’s favor.

As for his two Dancehall songs on the album, they are rhythmic and catchy.  Set It, which he dedicates to his “top girls” is laid on a 90-style Dancehall beat, where he commands them to wine and do raunchy things to him.  It makes for a good addition to Dancehall selectors’ playlists.

So too, is New Benz, a track laid on an uptempo Dancehall beat, and in which Popcaan starts off like a boss, deejaying about his prowess with girls, his wealth, and rides the riddim with precision.

Nevertheless, creativity appears to be missing in some instances, which makes some of the songs, frankly, forgettable, as the ideas are not new or unique or expressed in a compelling way, with metaphors, similes, etc.   One exception to this is Popcaan’s very inventive 11th Commandment, his “addition” to the Biblical 10 Commandments revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai and “inscribed by the finger of God on two tablets.” 

In this song’s hook and first verse, Popcaan scores lyrically, repeatedly warning his bonafides, and his women, that disloyalty is forbidden, declaring at intervals: “thou shalt not switch pan di dawgs dem.”

An effective album is expected to have a theme or central idea which is carried throughout its entirety, and this Popcaan does successfully, through his messages of rising out of a poor life to one of grandiosity.

Ostentation is the hallmark of this album.  However, although, it is centered on recurrent themes of sex and money, and bragging about the high life, it consists of songs such as Past Life and Memories, which focus on overcoming struggles, and zones in on one of the most prominent themes in Jamaican music over the last two decades: “badmind”.

Defeat the Struggle, though, was a struggle to listen to, with an entire one-minute devoid of lyrics toward the end.  

Freshness, which was predicated on promoting luxury brands, such as Gucci, Prada and Fendi, bragging about having multiple women, big cars, guns and ganja, regurgitated some of the same things that can be heard in Skeleton Cartier.   Cry fi Ya body is another about sex and all that jazz, that fans have heard before.

As for his collabs, Next to Me, his duet with former Miss World Toni-Ann Singh, by far, is the catchiest and most memorable of all the songs on the album.  It is followed up by, and rightly so, Teach Me, in which he asks the woman of his desire to teach him how to love her and be a good man, which is an OK song, as are his duets with Chronic Law and Drake.

Aboboyaa with Burna Boy is another uptempo song, with the recurrent Afrobeat theme: possessing wealth, lots of diamonds, showering women with material things, as Popcaan implores a girl to ride on his figurative aboboyaa, which in reality, is a West African tricycle.

The title track Great Is He, is a celebration of The Most High, and is not surprising from the God-fearing artist.  Musically, it demonstrates that if Sizzla Kalonji is Jamaica’s King of Melodies, then Popcaan, his junior, no doubt, is the crowned prince.  

Overall, Great is He could have been truly great with the input of more solid and powerful songwriting, and stronger beats.   The greatness which was anticipated, based on the album’s title, was not forthcoming throughout the entire body of work.