Search - Calton Coffie :: Scandal

With Jacob Miller front and center, Inner Circle were slated to join Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff in the pantheon of music superstars whose gifts supercede genre and nationality. Miller's tragic death in an auto accident a year before Marley passed left the group floundering for a decade or so, until they found Coffie, who sang lead on their '93 Grammy Award-winning single "Bad Boys" (best known as the theme song of the internationally syndicated Cops TV show) and other hits, helping the group garner a '94 Grammy nomination. Miller's raw, "roots" vibrato remains incomparable, but Coffie's voice is a standout in its own right, a rare synthesis of grainy texture and lush power. For this solo debut, Coffie draws on a one-nation-under-many-grooves pop sensibility nurtured by a childhood spent between England, Jamaica, and the United States, as well as his gift for wringing every drop of feeling out of a song. The tracks, packed with swooning strings and other signifiers of musical emotion, would be over the top for someone blessed with less volcanic passion, but it works here. Whether Coffie's mining archetypal reggae concerns in original tunes like the set's opener, "One Race," or putting a new spin on an old rock & roll saw like "Hotel California," Scandal achieves a winning and accessible pop-reggae style that should cut across several demographic borders. --Elena Oumano