Terry Lynn - Kingston Logic 2.0

Terry Lynn. Photo / NZ Herald

Rating: * * *

Terry Lynn was raised in the Jamaican ghetto. But she's not glorifying the fact with pimped cars and gold teeth.

The ghetto, according to Lynn, is where gunshots echo, you have to hide like a gecko and you can't touch the street until the gangsters, dem say so.

Kingston Logic 2.0 has been a long time in the making. Lynn had to wait until she could find someone to record what she wanted to play - music that evoked something quite different to the summery Jamaican music people were used to.

In this album she terrorises her listeners with thick rap and a thrashed synthesiser, but in the end the fear and the sound of smoking guns is twisted into something quite artistic. You can imagine her and a group of bruised partygoers mesmerised by a flickering strobe in some very underground bunker, mourning the safe suburbia they never knew.

The album is saved from being a really long rap track by a littering of tribal beats. They are Lynn's way of mourning a culture that has been ravaged by crime.

Destiny, a track that offers hope - "hold your head up high cause you can make it, don't let your dreams go by go forth and take it" saves the album from feeling like a flash of fear before a horrible death.

However, with lyrics like "a murder, a murder, a murderrrr", Lynn's album is probably best taken in small doses, as 15 tracks' worth could have you writhing in despair.