Damian Marley

Damian Marley is the youngest of Bob Marley's sons and the only child Bob had with Cindy Breakspeare, the Jamaican jazz singer who was crowned Miss World in 1976. He was two when his father died, and he grew up with a nickname that spelled out the inheritance: "Junior Gong", a nod to his father's "Tuff Gong". At 13 he had already formed a group, the Shephards, alongside Freddie McGregor's daughter and the son of Third World's Cat Coore, and they opened the 1992 Reggae Sunsplash.

Welcome to Jamrock, in 2005, is the record that carried the Kingston-born singer onto rock radio's countdowns. The title track is a heavy, rolling beast, a bass-weighted groove with his voice riding over it like a street reporter on deadline, the kind of record that rattles the back window of every car it plays in. His music keeps one foot in reggae and the other in whatever else he can bend into it, reggae fusion in the trade's shorthand.

He has since collected four Grammy Awards, put out records through Tuff Gong, Ghetto Youths Crew, Motown and Republic, and joined the group SuperHeavy.

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