God, this guy's good: don't laugh--the reggae, rap, and devotion that infuse Matisyahu's third album place him in an elite tradition of lofty style blenders.(Matthew Miller)

THAT MUST BE A JOKE, I THOUGHT--along with a million or so others. Months ago, there began to appear, on newspapers and Web sites and storefronts, pictures of a tall young white man in a long beard, broad-brimmed hat and flowing coat: the perfect Talmudic scholar, dressed in the uniform of the Hasidic Jew.

The word was this: He's an MC doing some kind of reggae-rap amalgam, who's been building an audience with late-night TV appearances and sold-out nightclub shows across the country. His rhymes combine ferocious God-love with the kind of celebratory, Zion-seeking global uplift once ...

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