Four months later, he headlined his Long Walk to Freedom concert at Kingston’s National Stadium where he drew over 32,000 fans.

In December 2018 Buju emerged a free man and returned to Jamaica. He was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in a Florida prison. A few weeks later, Buju’s Before The Dawn won the GRAMMY Award for Best Reggae Album - though the artist couldn’t attend the ceremony because his trial reconvened the following day. He was briefly released on bail that January and allowed to headline his fundraising concert for his mounting legal costs, which also featured Shaggy, Sean Paul, and Stephen and Damian Marley. 10, 2009 when he was arrested at his South Florida home for conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute. Throughout his career, Buju has vacillated between the frenetic dancehall of his youth and the roots reggae associated with the Rastafari way of life that he later adopted.īuju’s career abruptly stopped on Dec. He followed with 1995’s ‘ Til Shiloh, one of reggae/dancehall’s most celebrated and influential releases. Buju’s close friend/mentor and lovers rock king Beres Hammond granted the Prime Minister’s wish, giving a portion of his set to Buju, then joining him to deliver their hit duet 'Who Say.' When asked about the Jamaican leader’s request at the time, Buju paused and simply said, 'the next prime minister shall know me, too.'īuju released his first album for a major US label, Voice of Jamaica, in August 1993. Patterson missed Banton’s performance at Jamaica’s Reggae Sunsplash 1993 but still desired to see him live. īanton began toasting at just 12 years old and, by the early ‘90s, was so popular that the Prime Minister PJ Patterson was among his fans. Buju is a Maroon word for breadfruit and banton refers to a revered storyteller, a name Mark adopted in tribute to the deejay Burro Banton, whom he admired as a child. Born Mark Myrie, the youngest of 15 children born to a street vendor mother in a poor area of West Kingston, Banton is a descendant of the Maroons, Africans who defeated Jamaica’s British colonizers then retreated to the island’s mountainous interior, where they established communities of free Black people.

'Let me be free to create and express the way I feel because I am sure there is someone out there who feels the same way.'īanton has been expressing himself since he was young. 'I don’t want anyone to put I in a bubble and say I should only make music like this or like that,' Banton tells. His latest album, Born For Greatness, melds reggae and dancehall with elements of R&B, jazz flourishes, crunching rock guitars, even a spirited gospel-tinged closer. Thirty years later, Banton continues to defy expectations. So too did his flurry of early hits: 'Bogle,' 'Batty Rider,' 'Big It Up,' and 'Champion.' But the precocious teenage sensation also offered serious commentary on such hits as 'How Massa God World A Run' and 'Deportee.' When Buju Banton emerged on Jamaica’s dancehall scene in the early 1990s, his ferocious vocals were seemingly incongruous to his youth and slim build, which set him apart from his colleagues.

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