Former Phishead/druggie high school dropout Mathew Miller admits himself into a hippie-ish drug treatment center, gets clean, undergoes a conversion to Hasidic Judaism and changes his name to Matisyahu. If that weren't likely enough, Matisyahu is now burning up the pop charts with his religious brand of dancehall reggae. Seriously, you can't go five minutes lately without hearing "King Without A Crown" on alternative radio or seeing his video on MTV.

Now, I hate to be a pessimist, but this just screams novelty act to me - nothing more than someone trying to cash-in on stupid burnouts or lame white people (I'm white, and am thus allowed to make fun of us) who think 311 and UB40 are reggae greats. "King Without A Crown" is decent don't get me wrong, but I think people are more fascinated with the fact that some guy in a tall black hat and long beard is laying down riddims than whether or not the guy has any talent.

Since it's been about 25 years now since I could be entertained by someone saying "lookee here" while jingling a set of keys in my face, in answer to the question - does this guy actually display talent on his major label debut? The answer is not much. His rhymes are average at best, his lyrics obvious and elementary, and his vocals are piss weak. Look no further than songs as terrible as "What I'm Fighting For" or "Jerusalem" to see what I mean. Also a big thumbs down goes in the direction of veteran producer and legendary musician in his own right Bill Laswell, who tries to pile on vocoders on vocals and other studio gimmicktry instead of just bringing Matisyahu's band (which is actually the best part of this album) to the forefront. More often than not, the band just sounds washed-out and faded, so the album relies solely on Matisyahu to amaze, but the problem that remains on Youth is that you can't watch a sideshow act on CD. All I'm left with is my ears, and in my ear's opinion, this is pretty boring stuff.