Shake Off the Dust...Arise by Matisyahu

Shake Off the Dust...Arise, Matisyahu's first album, came out on JDub Records on October 28, 2004, and it's a strange and welcome thing: a reggae record sung from deep inside Jewish devotion. The title comes from "Lekhah Dodi", the liturgical poem sung to greet the Sabbath, which it pictures as a bride, and that sense of spiritual welcome runs all through these roots grooves.

"King Without a Crown" is the song that broke out, and as a 2005 single it became a Top 40 hit in the United States. The album itself had a rougher ride: once he moved to Epic it went out of print and turned into a collector's item, until a remastered reissue in October 2010, sold for a while only through his own website.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.