TRICKY ONCE CLAIMED that the only book he had ever read was Timothy White's biography of Bob Marley, Catch A Fire. Whether this is true or not, the implied association between the international triphopper Tricky and the most potent symbol of post-colonial, black masculinity in the '70s and early '80s, Bob Marley, is important. They confront the same political and social realities (racism, poverty, unemployment, and "inna city pressure"). They are talented songwriters. And they both are owned by Island Records.

If one listens to "Feed Me" -- an update of Marley's "Concrete Jungle" -- on Tricky's debut album Maxinquaye, their differences become apparent. Though gloomy, Marley's "Concrete Jungle" was essentially inspirational: Out of the darkness of the city, he desperately hopes that "sweet life/must be somewhere to be found." But for Tricky, this concrete jungle is not something you faintly hope to escape, it is now your only religion: "You keep me singing while I'm drowning down into that two tone vision/I have been raised in this place and now concrete is my religion." "Feed Me" is fragmented, incomplete, uncertain. Tricky's is a world inhabited by burned out souls and "ghetto youth" who are not dangerous or potentially political, but vulnerable and not "free from love for one master."

Bob Marley sings of a bright future "where every little thing is going to be all right." For Tricky, there is no tangible future, no way out of Babylon, no Ethiopia, or "black man land," as Prince Far I once sang. At the juncture of late-capitalism, all we have is the "aftermath."

What separates Tricky's world from Marley's was the collapse (in the global sense) of the image of black masculinity, or "black MacHo," as Michele Wallace calls it. It was Bob Marley who exhausted it, and brought on its demise. By the late '70s Marley had expanded into an abnormally massive symbol of black male power: He was mystical, political, all man, all black (though he was half white, and deeply embarrassed about this), all sex, with lovers all over the world. But no single man can maintain an edifice of that size; even a concept can cave in. Indeed it seems fitting that Bob Marley died of cancer, an illness characterized by growth spun wildly out of control. After his death, many critics and record execs looked for the next Marley -- the next Third-World, transnational, super- black masculine hero. But Marley could not be replaced. No one was naĂŻve enough to believe in a future that could be transformed and improved by a transnational super- black man. "The dream of yesterday becomes another lie," says Tricky, and in the face of such post-colonial African dictators as Mabuto, Moi, and Mugabe, who could contest that? The edifice collapsed, and all we (black males) could do was wander among the ruins.

It was Tricky, however, who figured out what should be done. He discovered and recorded the beauty of the ruins, of being exhausted and consumed. And, most importantly, he expressed the pleasures of roaming these ruins through a woman's voice. This was his greatest achievement. In the age of Marley, women (the I Threes in his band's case) existed only in the background, accompanying and inflating his black masculinity. With Tricky, a woman could properly participate in a fragmented male world. Martina, Tricky's singer, was as broken, as shattered, as vulnerable as Tricky; it was as if the "myth of superwoman" had run its course and now Martina was a roving soul among its ruins.

The only problem is that ultimately Tricky could not give in to her, a woman; he could not step back and surrender everything. Something irrational (atavistic maybe?) compelled (and still compels) him to attempt the impossible: resurrect the big black superstar. In his case it comes out all wrong. Listening to Juxtapose, his new CD made with Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, it is almost too painful to hear him attempting to be tough, sexually potent, mean, and political. The CD is a failure except for one cut, "Call Me," which is sung by a woman named DNA. As expected, during his performance at the Showbox, he dragged us through the whole wreckage of black masculinity. With no relief, no moment of pleasure, we were subjected to the pure pain of it. Though he had a woman singer, Angela, to fill in for Martina, she was as much in the background as Bob Marley's I Threes. This was Tricky's show, or dungeon, and it was torture to watch and hear him try to be the lead man. Indeed, if Tricky holds the mic we are haunted by the specter of "black MacHo," but if a woman sings, we are celebrating its afterlife like luminous ghosts in a haunted place.