featured reggae albums
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- Bad Brains
- Into the Future
- Thirty years after its bombastic beginnings, this legendary D.C. punk outfit keeps sailing on in its own unique clashing of hardcore and reggae.
- Beres Hammond
- One Love, One Life
- Ten songs of love and ten socially conscious songs fill the reggae singer's grand 2012 release.
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- Marcia Griffiths
- Marcia Griffiths and Friends
- Covering a large spectrum of Jamaican music, this weighty collection includes 38 duets between Griffiths and some of reggae's biggest names.
- Lee Perry & The Suffer …
- The Sound Doctor: Black…
- An incredible compilation of unearthed acetate recordings from the peak of eccentric reggae producer's prolific Black Ark studio years.
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- Barry Brown
- Right Now
- Producer Jah Screw provides the grooves and deep dub touches on Brown's satisfying lost album from 1984.
- Easy Star All-Stars
- Easy Star's Thrillah
- Diverse, fun, and quite cool, the Jamaican/American band returns with its reggae-flavored full-album tribute to Michael Jackson's Thriller.
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- Slightly Stoopid
- Top of the World
- With G. Love, Barrington Levy, Chali 2na, and others as their guests, the Sublime protégés make flip-flops, spliffs, and jamming sound so necessary.
- Adrian Sherwood
- Survival & Resistance
- On Survival & Resistance, Adrian Sherwood creates a dread, dubwise music of creative, sinister, and rebellious proportions.
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about reggae
Reggae is a music unique to Jamiaca, but it ironically has its roots in New Orleans R&B.; Reggae's direct forefather is ska, an uptempo, rhythmic variation based on the New Orleans R&B; Jamaican musicians heard broadcast from the US on their transistor radios. Relying on skittering guitar and syncopated rhythms, ska was their interpretation of R&B; and it was quite popular in the early '60s. However, during one very hot summer, it was too hot to either play or dance to ska, so the beat was slowed down and reggae was born. Since then, reggae has proven to be as versatile as the blues, as it lends itself to a number of interpretations, from the melodic rock steady of Alton Ellis and the rock and folk-influenced songwriting of Bob Marley to the trippy, near-psychedelic soundscapes of dub artists like Lee "Scratch" Perry. It has crossed into the mainstream through the bright, bouncy "reggae sunsplash" festivals and pop-oriented bands like UB40, but more adventurous reggae artists, such as Marley and Perry, have influenced countless reggae, folk, rock and dance artists. Their contributions resonate throughout popular music.