Emmanuel Anebsa Hits UK Reggae iTunes With ‘My Jamaica Roots’

Reggae artiste Emmanuel Anebsa is all smiles this week as he just released ‘My Jamaica Roots’, his most commercially successful album to date, as he debuted at number two on the UK reggae iTunes charts this week.

“I never got on the chart before, so this is my best album sales ever. To come out, and on the first day and get there and peak at #2 on the top 200 album chart is quite good with Bob at number 1,” he said.

The album remained on the chart for four days.

The 9 track album features politically charged songs such as ‘Mash Up Jamaica’, ‘Sing the Revolution’ and  ‘Time’. The album was released on February 11th on the Wont Stop Record label.

He finds it very gratifying that he is able to make a political statement with this fiery work and still get commercial sales.

“We live in the UK and grow on Jamaica culture and we’re militant inna Babylon cause we want to be free. Big respect to artistes like Hugh Mandel, Jacob Miller and Dennis Brown who I grew up listening to in my father’s cafe. I grow up and I see the oppression, lack of opportunity created by a system designed against us. We were victims of systematic racism in the UK, I grow with that and see it is still the same but now it is racism with a smile,” he said.

One of Anebsa’s favourite songs on the album is ‘Sing the Revolution’, which has a theme of resisting oppression which rings particularly true in Black History Month.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlHQQJO9Jlw

“I got to sing the revolution is one of my favourites. With lines like: yes the man ah inspector, him say mi have to wuk the hectare, yes him come fi bruk the tractor, mi have to work it little harder. It has been a struggle for my black people, the lines: when mi take a look, the man weh give me beating, ah the man weh give me book. Is a trick with disaster, they try to defeat us with their unfair practices, they create chains to trap us. In the education sector, they teach us to fail, creating a “school-to-prison pipeline’ where they can further oppress us,” he said.

Anebsa is a savvy businessman who launched Wontstop Record in his hometown, Bristol in 1998. He has released 40 albums including the popular St Paul’s Ghetto.

“We nah stop bun Babylon. With no compromise for money or position in music cause I know you can’t be famous and sing the revolution,” he said.