Buju Banton

Well supported

Mark Anthony Myrie, born 15 July 1973, took the stage name Buju from a childhood nickname and Banton from the deejay tradition of the title. Accounts place his birth in the Salt Lane area of Kingston, the youngest of a large family, and his schooling at Denham Town High — the two are frequently conflated into a single claim about where he is from, and are kept separate here. He released his first single, "The Rule", in 1987 at fourteen, and by the early 1990s was among the most commercially dominant deejays in Jamaica. The turn came with 'Til Shiloh in 1995, his fourth album, which set aside the slack and gun material for songs shaped by his adoption of Rastafari and is generally treated as one of reggae's defining albums. He records for his own Gargamel Music. Rasta Got Soul brought a Grammy nomination in 2009 and Before the Dawn won Best Reggae Album in 2011, awarded while he was in United States custody; that case, and his release in December 2018, are catalogued separately in this archive as public record.