Dark Prince?

One the most striking features of Keith Hudson's album Too Expensive is the sleeve. Both the front and back feature a shot of Hudson from the knees over a white featureless background. In both Hudson in affect and behavior, if not actually partaking in the sacrament, definitely signifies as much. Most important is not the front image, though Hudson's suited-up mod Rastaman look predates similar fashions in Dancehall by at least five years, but the Back image. Hudson is wearing a blue two piece track suit over a cardigan but more importantly the outfit is TIGHT; and the bulge of Hudson's "frank and beans" is decidedly apparent and in your face.

Perhaps a sly commentary on the typical east-west/"other" imprinted on black men and women's sexuality? The nature of a British record labels (Virgin) exploiting, and white middle class progressives getting off on, music and musicians from Jamaican ghettos for authenticity and realness? If anything it definitely gives the heads up that Hudson is going to fuck with our expectations of what we want from a crossover reggae record. (And this is while Marley has just started to blow-up on American college campuses!)

And so it is with the music. American R&B and funk tracks and not "authentic" reggae, not a lot of sufferers righteous lyricalness but wierd and deceptively pandering and simple and stupid lyrics. Fuck connecting to American white audiences, Hudson's shooting for fellow suffering disenfranchised American blacks.

Even now this record is difficult (as are all the Hudson records I've heard). Right on.