Neville Staple – The Rude Boy Returns

Recorded with a little help from The Damned’s Rat Scabies and The Clash’s Mick Jones (revisiting The Specials’ “Do Nothing”), you have to admire Staple’s nerve for further boasting a “Leadbelly duet”?specifically a sampled ragga rave-up of “Cow Cow Yicky” that sounds a bit like Rednex’s “Cotton Eye Joe”. The rest, to Staple’s credit, retains some of the spirit of 1979’s The Specials in its balance of sober social commentary, like the anti-drugs skank “Pressure”, and daft knees-up rocksteady.