Don’t judge an album by its cover, because Tricky Meets South Rakkas Crew could fool you. It’s not the next project of trip hop lyricist Tricky or even a fleeting collaboration with the Florida based South Rakkas Crew. In fact, I doubt that Tricky even made the trip over the North Atlantic to help work on the album that remixes a selection of 10 songs from his last release, Knowle West Boy, stripping down a reflective and contemplative Tricky and dressing him in a dancehall/dubstep get-up.

Considering the world’s ongoing honeymoon with dubstep, this release by the South Rakkas Crew could prove a smart move. They’ve already dipped their toe in this ocean with their track Mad Again remixed by Boy 8-bit, with no less heavier remixes by Fake Blood and Diplo.

The South Rakkas Crew are very careful to keep the integrity of Tricky’s sentiment and reflection in tracks like Joseph but this could merely be for the sake of easy listening. A remix like this is beautiful for its relaxed and passive beats; Tricky still remains an auteur with passion, while two minutes of additional production allow South Rakkas Crew to show off their wares, arming the track with a groove the original doesn’t know. And though the album devotes a large amount of its time to scratch-and-glitch textures, the style is used to best effect in Coalition, where Tricky’s ragga-verse is not compromised by the jackhammer dubstep but fills the empty space, the beneficiary of well-crafted syncopation.

Then, there are the questionable changes that undermine some of the better remixes. For tracks like C’mon Baby and Cross to Bear, Tricky’s voice seems to be put through a auto-tune processor, which makes him sound more like Kanye West circa 808s and Heartbreaks (a grave criticism considering Tricky’s personable lyrics and vocals). In Slow, Tricky’s cover of Kylie Minogue’s classic, the seductive vocals that are used so sparingly and beautifully in Knowle West Boy are forgone in an almost unrecognizable dub version, where the hook disappears beneath layers of repetitive samples and sequences.

The most intriguing track is definitely Numb, which stands outside the rest of the album with its softer synth tendency towards electropop. The lower frequency is scarce compared to the rest of the album and it’s only in its difference that this track stands out as a welcome change from the mind-dredging bass. It’s unfortunate that the penultimate and final songs that follow Numb retreat back to the familiar territory of dancehall and dubstep; a disappointing end to the album that teeters on the edge of diversity, but then resists.

A release like this, however, is harder to listen to in the comfort of a clean and well-kept bedroom. More suited to the grimy underground club, stacks of speaker need shake the sticky floor, where you wouldn’t so much as listen to the music than feel it.

There are some admirable efforts to channel Tricky in this album, but more indulgences and liberties taken with the dubstep bass lines than is necessary or interesting. Tricky Meets South Rakkas Crew builds a bold vision, but falls short given that the Tricky kid from Knowle West created an incredibly strong precedent only a year ago.