[1] The musician and singer recorded the album primarily in Jamaica's Tuff Gong studios with producers including Simon and Diamond, Bobby Digital, Phil Chill and Sly Dunbar.

On release, No Reservations drew acclaim from music critics, who saw its fusion of ragga and bhangra modes as innovative, and it reached number 36 on the UK Albums Chart.

No Reservations has been credited for helping popularise ragga music and British-Asian pop, and was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize,[2] while Apache Indian received four nominations at the 1994 Brit Awards.

[8] Although he did not intend to release the song, he changed his mind when his friends enjoyed it and pressed a few private copies for himself, local pirate station PRCL and nearby reggae shops.

[15] The translation themes of "Move Over India" carried over into its proposed follow-up, "Come Follow Me", which featured Birmingham MC Mickey G, but the single was cancelled after the song had been heavily bootlegged.

[11] According to Apache Indian's manager, Mambo Sharma, "so much thought" went into recording No Reservations because, as the singer's debut album, it had to introduce listeners to his work effectively.

[8] He collaborated with numerous reggae stalwarts, including Sly Dunbar, Robert Livingston and Bobby Digital,[8][18] who all provided riddims for the album,[7] as well as vocalists Frankie Paul and Maxi Priest.

[25] The album opens with the sound of a "hail of bullets", a "gangster stance" familiar to reggae and rap which is deflated by Kapur's boast that he is "hotter than vindaloo curry".

[23] The re-appearing "Chok There" fuses bhangra and ragga rhythms,[26] notably using a pronounced dhol drum riddim,[6] and features sitar[27] and percussion breaks.

[14] Taylor writes that although reggae dominates the song, the "distant sounds of India", like the aforementioned instruments and "vocalise of Indian film music", as well as its "folklike ululations", flitter among "the edges".

[24][21][23] Colin Larkin wrote that the record moved Kapur "away from the frothier elements of his distinctive ragga-reggae and towards the role of social commentator and Anglo-Asian representative.

[23] Many of the issues Kapur raises on the album were traditionally undiscussed within Asian communities,[30] with the singer intending to discuss things "that haven't been talked about before".

[10] His bodyguard, Kid Milo, explained to Sullivan in March 1993: "The Indian community don't take kindly to his singing about street things.

"[8] "Chok There", whose titles translates to "raise the floorboards" in Punjabi,[8] is chanted using English and Jamaican patois,[6] and sees the singer assume the persona of Don Raja, a dreadlocked Indian raggamuffin who "bring a new stylee" and "a different fashion".

[14] On "Badd Indian", Kapur's fuses the bombastic boasts of dancehall with another vernacular tradition from the Caribbean, Trinidadian "robber talk", and sees the singer adopt the mask of a Native American, a popular masquerade at the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival.

[31][36] Natalie Sarrazin interprets the names Apache Indian and No Reservation as "signifying not only political resistance, but making light of the idea that all people of colour are lumped together in one category".

[36] George Lipsitz observed that due to Kapur's stage name and the album title, several listeners speculated that the singer was a Native American himself.

[14] The singer's haircut, credited to Jon the Man of Curtis,[19] represents, as Maier describes it, "a trend in the early 1990s among South Asians to wear artfully shaved hairstyles.

[40] "The combination of irresistible beats, volatile, timely messages, and matinee-idol looks have made this 26-year-old immigrants' son larger than he could have possibly imagined before he got into the bhangra biz three years ago."

[42] To promote the song together, Kapur and Priest undertook a short tour singing live vocals over backing tracks; the first performance was in Peterborough, known for its small Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities.

[5] It entered the UK charts at number 27, between Little Angels and Paul McCartney, and Steven Wells of NME noted that "In such company, Apache's ecstatic mix of bhangra, ragga and North African music burns itself into the average pop fan's brain like acid.

However, the album proved to be one of several releases, alongside Chaka Demus & Pliers' Tease Me (1993) and singles by Angelique Kidjo, that saw the label build a reputation "as an essential source for left-of-centre dance music," according to Larry Flick.

[8] Apache Indian's success coincided with the rise of ragga in the British mainstream, and he is credited alongside artists like Shinehead, Shaggy, Snow, Shabba Ranks, Bitty McLean, Inner Circle and Chaka Demus & Pliers for launching this development.

[49] Apache Indian's celebrity was huge by this point; MTV Asia played his videos in rotation, his face adorned at least 23 billboards in Bombay, while his cultural reach spread to advertisements for butter with a slogan riffing on Kapur's stage name.

[28] David Belcher of The Herald similarly said the album's melding of "Afro-Caribbean ragga groovery" with "lilting Anglo-Asian electro bhangra and rap pungency", as well as Kapur's hybrid patois and use of irony, resulted in a "brilliant new dancefloor mode".

[32] Anita Naik of Smash Hits complimented the catchiness, loudness and outspoken nature of the album, noting that even those who dislike club music "will subconsciously grind away to it".

While considering him to continue the lineage of Midlands-based multicultural pop from UB40 and the ska of 2 Tone Records, they felt this did not explain the whole of his appeal, admiring his self-confident, "sardonic gleam" and "effortless slide between dialects [that] comes across as an eminently sensible response to his particular street culture.

"[23] Andrew Balkin wrote a negative review for Kingston Informer, writing that although several songs feature "some great messages", "you have to understand the lyrics before you can even figure out what they are".

[16] In a retrospective review, Ken Hunt of AllMusic felt the album was a "remarkable debut", although qualified his praise by observing how several songs had already appeared on the "Don Raja" maxi-single.

[5] According to author Rehan Hyder, the album's commercial success and Mercury Prize nomination largely increased media interest in Asian musicians.