Got to be tough

"In his Rolling Stone profile, Hibbert resists talking about retirement, but acknowledges his career is winding down. It may not rival his classic albums - and it never deludes itself into thinking it does - but Got To Be Tough captures Hibbert as committed as always, still giving it all he's got".

Read review

"The once robust voice is thinner but still gruffly effective on songs such as "Warning Warning", "Freedom Train" and "Struggle", which packs a powerful socio-political message over a soundbed that spans the black musical diaspora from R&B and funk to righteous reggae skanking".

"Unsurprisingly for an artist of his vintage, recent releases (...) suggested [Toots] was content to trade on past glories. This makes Got To Be Tough, his first all-new album for a decade, even more of a joy ... With Toots co-producing and writing all but one of the songs, the agreeable loose, soul-inflected results are neither a rigorous recreation of classic reggae sounds nor a rejection of them. Equally at ease with the past is Toots himself: his hard, raw delivery, informed by the church and Otis Redding, is impassioned, full of conviction, and gloriously undimmed by the years ... One high point is the duet of Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" with dynasty scion Ziggy (...), [which], rather than the faux naïvety it could have been, becomes a fierce, key-changed ska alert with psychedelic guitar and the sense that every little thing might not be all right after all".