When Bob Marley’s death got people started on the task of evaluating the ultimate importance of his music, few thought of him as a “singles artist.” But since 1984’s Legend compilation, that’s how folks, especially folks who don’t know the albums from which Legend was drawn, have begun to think of him, and with good reason: by gathering in one place every great riff and melody that Marley ever recorded, Legend has proved as durable in its ability to induce thrills as the Phil Spector box.

All of which leaves Natural Mystic, Tuff Gong’s new Marley collection, somewhat in the lurch. With the exception of “Keep On Moving,” the bittersweet “Pimper’s Paradise,” and the sizzling “Iron Lion Zion,” little here would Improve Legend. The most trenchant version of “Trench town Rock,” after all, belongs to the Tosh-Marley Wailers of 1971, and that crazy baldhead Sinead O’Connor still owns “War.” That leaves songs such as “One Drop,” “Crazy Baldheads,” and “Roots, Rocks, Reggae” to provide the momentum, songs that function well enough on their original albums but that feel slack on a best-of.

No song, however, feels as out-of-place here as Chris Salewicz’s liner notes, which report the Third World’s regarding of Marley as Jesus Christ as if that reflected well on the success of the music or the religion that Marley sought to perpetuate. You don’t have to practice Rastafarianism to notice that Natural Mystic’s lyrics are even more doctrinally specific than Kirk Franklin’s. And the tendency of Third Worlders to see Marley’s cancer as a “crucifixion” instead of as a possible consequence of his religion’s sacramental requirements is the sort of natural mysticism that makes one proud to be a crazy bald head.