Birdseye loved a dash of Levi so much they added him to their Chicken Chargrills and Sainsburys have him sitting alongside such luminaries as Daddies, Paul Newman and Linda McCartney. Yes, sauces make strange bedfellows of us all and there’s none stranger or more exotic than one-time James Brown and Maxi Priest cohort, Levi Roots who has enlisted some of the UK and Jamaica’s most treasured possessions to help him out with spicy new album, ‘Red Hot’. Co-producers and rhythm builders Mafia & Fluxy take drum bass and keyboard duties whilst sax and trombone arrive from the fiery lungs of Dean Fraser and Henry ‘Buttons’ Tenyue.
If the appearing on BBC’s Dragons Den with his ‘Reggae Reggae Sauce’ didn’t intimate Roots any, then tackling the crime and violence in Brixton must seem like child’s’ play, and tackle it he does with his usual balance of tasty commerciality and a rare sensitivity to the business of being black and doing black things by black rules in a world where the white stuff presides (‘Black On Black’).
At times joyous, at times poignant (‘Share Love’ – Acoustic Mix) and at times shamelessly upbeat and populist (‘So Out of My Mind’) ‘Red Hot’ makes the perfect accompaniment to all fish, meat and rocksteady dishes.