Legalize It by Peter Tosh

Legalize It, Peter Tosh's first solo album after his years as one of the Wailers, came out on Virgin in June 1976, and it lands like a manifesto. Tosh produced it himself, cutting it at Treasure Isle and Randy's in Kingston, and he doesn't bother with subtlety: the title track is a straight-up campaign song for making cannabis legal, especially as medicine, written in answer to the victimization he kept suffering at the hands of Jamaican police.

The grooves are deep, loose and rolling, the kind of roots reggae that takes its time, and Tosh's voice has the steel of a man who means every word. It was a big year for the Wailers diaspora: Bunny Wailer released his own solo debut, Blackheart Man, the same year, and Bob Marley's new Wailers put out Rastaman Vibration. Tosh followed up with Equal Rights.

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