Randy Valentine - New Narrative EP (Royal Order Music)

In the intro of the EP Randy explains exactly what the title stands for: "Narrative: a spoken or written account or connected events, a story, a description of a tale, a chronicle... What stories led me to place where I'm now standing?". 'New Narrative' opens with the upful 'Happiness Station', a track that is sure to uplift your spirits; exactly what Randy intended, but the fact life isn't  always a bed of roses Valentine proves with 'Real Like That'. Lovers tunes 'Too Late (Natty Escape)' and 'Me And My Lioness' are antipodes: the first song is about a woman who doesn't show enough confidence and patience to build a relationship with a dread, while in 'Me And My Lioness' Valentine indicates a successful relationship should be based on mutual respect, support and understanding. No reggae, but if the melody of 'Warrior Ah Road' sounds familiar, that may be because for this song Randy basically recycled the acoustic version of 2Pac's 'Thugz Mansion' (from 2002's 'Better Dayz'), and something similar happens with 'Vigilant', without discussion the absolute showstopper on 'New Narrative', for which he borrowed some chords from Dennis Brown's '(Don't) Want To Be No General'. With 8 vocal cuts and 1 dub, this is yet again a relatively short release we'd rather prefer to define as an EP than as a full-fledged album; but that's about the only slightly negative comment on 'New Narrative' we could come up with. Solution? Just play this one on repeat, you won't regret it!