Various Artists - Strictly The Best 56 & 57 (VP Records)

Just as on the first part of last year's edition, 'Strictly The Best 56' once again features mainly lovers tunes. In that category, Christopher Martin opens with 'Better Than The Stars', the more than excellent 'Smile' by newcomer Jah-Lil is right on the mark, Gentleman recycles the Skylarking riddim for 'This Is Love', and Raging Fyah provides a dash of "tropicalidad" with a remix of 'Would You Love Me' for which they invited Brazilian band Cidade Negra. Providing some counterbalance are Spiritual, Iba Mahr and Junior Kelly, respectively with 'Time Has Come', 'Changes' and 'No Soul, No Heart, No Love', while Richie Spice signs for the only ganja tune with 'California'.

Even 'Strictly The Best 57', the dance hall-part of this compilation, contains a bunch of ladies tunes... There's Alkaline's 'Pretty Girl', a song over the Forever riddim, followed by 'Movie', a song every dancehall enthusiast will recognize as it's actually a remix of Shenseea and Vybz Kartel's controversial tune 'Loodi' by Belgian DJ Septik (who gave the song a Walshy Fire-like moombahton/EDM vibe), and Mavado also chips in with 'Live Blanket', in a remix by ZJ Rush.

More gyal tunes with 'Easy To Love You' by English-Jamaican Culan, who, earlier this year made a name for himself with his dancehall version of Ed Sheeran's 'Shape Of You', and then it's back to Alkaline for 'Money Man', like 'Pretty Girl Team' a production by Armzhouse Records.

Then we get a number of so-called "dance instruction tunes", of course starting with Ding Dong, who popularized the genre in 2006 with his 'Badman Forward Badman Pull Up' and here does his thing with 'Fling', the song that also gave its name to the eponymous riddim, and 'Skand And Rave', a production by Richard 'Shams' Browne and Frenchie for which he was joined by Beenie Man and Voicemail. In addition, there are also '25 Bouncing', a song by RDX over the aptly titled Instruction riddim, and 'Time Up' by Shensheea, over a riddim reminiscent of the productions by Music Works from the nineteen eighties and nineties.

Time for the big guns... Aidonia's 'Fire' and '21 Bad Gyal' by Dexta Daps, hits over the 1 Gug riddim and Riddim 21, are featured here in a "clean" version thus can be skipped as far as we're concerned. Masicka goes for gun talk in 'Roll Clean', a song that will probably not linger.

We end up in style. First with Stonebwoy's 'My Name', another production by Armzhouse Records over their Forever riddim - as far as we're concerned one of the current dancehall stars artists to keep an eye on - and then 'Hot Gal', a remix of Busy Signal's 'That Style Deh', a grime-bomb by English producer DJ Spooky (Slew Dem Crew).

Nice double overview of some of the most prominent lovers, roots and dancehall tunes of the past year, even though as far as we're concerned 2017 had far more to offer. Happy holidays and see you in 2018!