Jimmy Cliff's dilemma, more than amply illustrated by this well-planned double album ["The Best Of"], is that of the artist of ethnic origins who tries to break out of the confining boundaries of his background to become a citizen of the world. In the only partially successful search for wider acclaim with material like … his own, rather simplistically optimistic, "Wonderful World, Beautiful People," he loses the chance to properly define himself. On the face of it, Cliff couldn't lose. On top of his undoubted talent he secured the lead role in one of the great cult movies of our time, "The Harder They Come," which more than anything was to be responsible for reggae breaking out of the lower-class ghetto to which the intellectual rock critics had consigned it till then. But by then, as Carl Gayle points out in his excellent notes to this compilation, Jimmy was...