Is it still reggae? A living genre argues with itself

The Rastafari-informed reggae that dominated the 1970s: themes of repatriation, Babylon and deliverance over one-drop drumming and heavy bass. Burning Spear, Culture, the Abyssinians, Black Uhuru and the international-era Wailers defined it, Island and Virgin carried it abroad, and its seriousness remains the reference point every revival reaches for.

Protoje (Oje Ken Ollivierre, born 14 June 1981) is a Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter and label founder from St Elizabeth, and a central architect of the 2010s current commonly called the Reggae Revival. His albums The Seven Year Itch (2011), The 8 Year Affair (2013), Ancient Future (2015), A Matter of Time (2018), In Search of Lost Time (2020) and Third Time's the Charm (2022) join roots reggae to hip-hop, soul and contemporary production; “Who Knows,” featuring Chronixx, became his signature international recording. Through In.Digg.Nation he has developed and released work by artists including Lila Iké, Sevana and Jaz Elise.

Rvssian (Tarik Johnston), a Jamaican producer and founder of Head Concussion Records (2007) who rose to prominence producing Vybz Kartel's 'Life Sweet' (2010) and became a key architect of trap-inflected dancehall and cross-genre collaborations.

Umbrella term for records blending reggae or dancehall with pop, R&B and hip-hop, attached to the crossover generation of the late 1990s and 2000s — Shaggy and Sean Paul its most commercially successful faces. It names a market position as much as a sound: Jamaican rhythm, international radio.

A 2010s-2020s strand of dancehall built on trap drum programming, 808 bass and melodic, often auto-tuned delivery, associated with Vybz Kartel's later output and a younger generation of producers and deejays. Debated as either dancehall's natural evolution or a dilution of its riddim-and-selector core.

Adidja Azim Palmer, born 7 January 1976 and raised in the Waterford district of Portmore, is the most influential and prolific dancehall artist of his generation and, by most accounts, the one who set the genre's late-2000s direction. He began in 1996 in a trio called Vibes Cartel with Mr Lee and a singer billed Escobar — the name taken from a film about the Colombian cartel, and later shortened to his own — and in 2006 founded the Portmore Empire collective, the crew that carried the "Gaza" identity through the rivalry with Mavado's Gully side. His singles reached a level of Caribbean ubiquity few artists manage: "Ramping Shop" in 2009, which the Broadcasting Commission's directive of that year was written in direct response to, then "Clarks", "Summertime" and "Dancehall Hero". He is variously billed Worl' Boss, Teacha and King of Dancehall. He was convicted of murder in 2014; the Privy Council quashed the conviction in 2024 and the Court of Appeal ordered no retrial, and in July 2026 he shared a stage with Mavado for the first time since 2008.

The 2010s movement of young roots-conscious Jamaican artists — Chronixx, Protoje, Jah9, Kabaka Pyramid, Jesse Royal among them — who returned live bands, Rastafari themes and album-length statements to the centre of the music. The name, coined within the movement itself around 2011, marked a generation claiming the roots tradition on its own terms.

Jamar "Chronixx" McNaughton, the reggae revival's defining voice: Dread and Terrible (2014) announced the movement's arrival, Chronology (2017) earned a Grammy nomination, and his Zincfence Redemption band restored the touring live band to the centre of young Jamaican music.

Skillibeng (Emwah Warmington, b. 1996, St Thomas), a Jamaican deejay whose 2019 single 'Brick Pan Brick' and 2020's 'Crocodile Teeth' made him a leading figure of trap-inflected, drill-adjacent dancehall; he topped Audiomack's 2021 reggae/dancehall streams and won a 2022 MOBO award.

The fact, now several decades old, that reggae belongs to more countries than one: national scenes with their own stars in Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, Chile, West Africa and beyond, most of them tracing directly to Jamaican records, tours and sound-system visits. The archive treats these scenes as part of the music's history rather than as echoes of it.

A 2010s wave of singers reclaimed roots reggae for a new century.

A new cohort of Jamaican deejays broke through on YouTube views and streaming charts rather than radio play, without breaking from dancehall's toasting lineage.

One category, a whole family of genres, and a recurring question: who counts as reggae?

Streaming globalised Jamaican music's reach - and rewired who earns from it.