Roughly once a decade, Americans remember they kinda-sorta like reggae and raise a red cup to Caribbean sounds for a few years. Not everyone is so neglectful: In hip-hop, dalliances with dancehall are routine, and country acts and jam bands regularly channel island escapism a la Jimmy Buffett. But in mainstream pop, it last came with the early-millennium successes of Sean Paul, Shaggy and the younger Rihanna.
In the past two years, however, Canadian band Magic’s “Rude” and Jamaican singer OMI’s “Cheerleader” (a 2012 cut given new life with a Felix Jaehn remix) each hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. This fall, Virgin Islands-born brother duo R. City reached the charts with “Locked Away,” its ode to fidelity even when a partner is doing hard time (as their father once did). The track made it to No. 1 on the Pop Songs chart, partly thanks to an Adam Levine hook — and perhaps also to timeliness, as Black Lives Matter and other voices are raising awareness about mass incarceration. Add to that list, among others, Scandinavian duo Nico & Vinz’s 2014 hit “Am I Wrong?,” the calypso-meets-doo-wop of Meghan Trainor and even Justin Bieber’s “What Do You Mean?,” cited as part of the “tropical house” trend, a Caribbean-inflected softening in dance-pop after years of hard Euro house beats.
But the peril for island waves in American pop is that they’re often taken for novelties — and when they recede they leave a lot of artists beached. This month, OMI and R. City attempt to ward off that curse with their debut full-lengths. In the case of OMI (born Omar Samuel Pasley), the odds aren’t sunny. Nothing else on his Me 4 U achieves “Cheerleader”-level lift. The skittering beat is enticing on “Standing on All Threes,” long ago his first single in Jamaica, but it’s too full of explicit sexuality for Northerners who warmed to his mega-hit’s goofball “wizard of love.” On the album, his devil-may-care vocals, so beguiling in smaller doses, begin to seem workmanlike, applied indifferently to all subjects. By the end, he may as well be singing a cranberry juice ad.
R. City’s What Dreams Are Made Of, by contrast, is bursting with the pressure of too much personality. Formerly Rock City, Theron and Timothy Thomas have penned hits for Ciara and Miley Cyrus, but waited years for their own closeup. The album celebrates and bemoans the pair’s career trajectory, sometimes to amusing effect: On “Again,” R. City engages in the tradition of the hustler’s apology to his lady — but instead of slinging rock, the dilemma is that “Rihanna needs a hit, I gotta give it to her.” The self-reference gets exasperating, however, by the 11-minute closer “Our Story.”
Ignore that, and the duo’s virtuosity carries this diverse album, from the ragga-rap of “Like This” to the rock-steady “Crazy Love,” with roots royalty Tarrus Riley. R. City often treads the line between tribute and retread — nearly all the virtues of “Over” are from Lenny Kravitz’s 1991 “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over.” And “Locked Away” aside, gender views here aren’t always admirable. Still, the act is expressive and skillful enough to see its songs through, while OMI seems fated to sink when America’s fickle attention drifts off with the tide.