Ras Kimono

Well supported

Oseloke Augustine Onwubuya (9 May 1958 - 10 June 2018), billed Ras Kimono, was one of the two men who made reggae a Nigerian music rather than a Jamaican one being covered. In the early 1980s he was in Jastix, the Benin City band that also held Majek Fashek, Amos McRoy Jegg and Black Rice Osagie, playing weekly in local bars and clubs before any of them recorded alone. His solo debut Under Pressure, on Premier Music in 1989, sold over a hundred thousand copies and made him a continental name on the strength of "Rum-Bar Stylée", with "Natty Get Jail" and "Rhumba Stylee" behind it. What distinguished the record was that it did not imitate: the delivery carries Jamaican patois and Nigerian pidgin at once, the register Fela Kuti had already used to reach the urban poor directly. He died on 10 June 2018.