Some might argue that God And Time, the newest album from Vybz Kartel, is technically the onetime dancehall king’s second album since he was released from prison in 2024. He spent more than a decade behind bars after receiving a murder conviction (now overturned) in what’s reckoned as Jamaica’s longest trial. 2024’s self-explanatory First Week Out, however, was more digital mixtape than full album, 33 minutes of material recorded—in fact, quite literally phoned in—while Kartel was still locked up. God and Time, by contrast, is Kartel’s official “allow me to re-introduce myself” moment. As its name suggests, it takes thematic swings of global and even cosmic ambition.
The more metaphysical of these lyrical aspirations are spelled out in the album’s intro and title track, a minor-keyed and reflective exercise in what might be called garrison gospel. This particular mode of dancehall is best exemplified by Kartel’s protégé Popcaan on “Silence” and his former archrival Mavado on “On the Rock.” Kartel’s take on the trope is less of the “calling on God to smite my enemies” sort of prayer and more of a plea for healing in the face of persecution.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Thirteen years’ incarceration on flimsy evidence surely qualifies, and “God And Time” starts the album on a strong, if heavy, foot. The next few tracks, however—the wispy, cotton candy synths of “Soft Girl Era,” the saccharine “Some Days”—stumble with a lightness so insubstantial it feels like they are hardly there. Some of this can be put down to the production; Kartel’s longtime collaborator and established hitmaker TJ Records conjures a palette more suited to the trebly ionosphere of Spotify streams than the groundshaking speaker stacks that once fortified dancehall’s earthly domain. But something seems to be missing in Kartel’s lyrical approach as well. Lyrics like “Soft Girl Era, more than a Hot Girl Summer” reach for relevance with Instagram catchphrases now seven years out of date. Worse, on these first few tracks, Kartel’s flow seems to have lost some of the roguish spark that made him a star in the first place.
This change jumps out even more glaringly on “Genie” precisely because the production kicks up a notch in urgency (and down a notch in sub-bass). The approximate rhymes of the hook “If I was a genie/Would you be greedy?/Or would you really need me?” come off laughable. It’s not because the old Kartel wouldn’t have thrown down such awkwardly paced bars—he absolutely would have, but he would have done so with an impish glee and a taunting flow that disarmed the listener long enough to for the deejay to deliver a coup de grâce with a devastating gun lyric or barbed battle rhyme, alternating between venom and goofy humor. Here, both are replaced with a put-on earnestness that proves a poor substitute, tempting the listener to skip ahead to the album’s collection of bold-named features.
Of these, there are at least half a concert’s worth, including several generations of dancehall royalty (Spice, Shenseea, Skillibeng, Mavado) as well as Afropop king Wizkid and urbano star Farruko. This mirrors Kartel’s triumphant return to the stage with a sold out, two-night stand at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in April 2025, where he served his fans’ pent-up demand with selections from a deep catalog of boom tunes, alternating with a host of international guest stars performing and paying tribute. These cameos also served to spare Kartel’s diminished breath control, due to a rare autoimmune condition called Graves’ disease.
