Buju Banton Speaks On SOJA’s Grammy Win: “We’re Making Trash Music”
Buju Banton says some Jamaican entertainers have been making “trash music.”
The Grammy Award winner was speaking on SOJA’s Grammy win in the Best Reggae Album category at the 64th Annual Awards last Sunday. The predominantly-white, Virginia-based band had upstaged Jamaican artists Sean Paul, Spice, Etana, Gramps Morgan, and Jesse Royal and the Academy faced a flurry of accusations—including those of bias and race-based favoritism.
However, the usually outspoken music veteran has declared that the Jamaican industry has been turning a blind eye as entertainers continued to churn out substandard music.
“We’re making trash music,” Banton told IRIE FM’s Courtney Mac, after he wrapped up a performance at this year’s Love and Harmony Cruise on April 4. “When we out here … most of us didn’t bat an eye. They didn’t see the consequences or ramifications of such a bad card that was played on us in the industry.”
The Champion singer said there is work to be done to make Jamaican music great again, before he called out radio DJs with conflicts of interest.
“We have some work fi do, it’s called a culling, we have to make this music great again,” Buju said. “The thing that plague this music for years, the musician dem play a minor part, but when you have disc jockeys now that become producers and they want to dictate who suppose to be heard on the radio and them they themselves have a stake in what’s been played on the radio because it’s monetary, the music take a left turn. Hence we have what we have now, what you call it? Cause I don’t know what to call it. What you call it?”
Banton, who won the Grammy award for Best Reggae Album in 2010 for his tenth studio album Before The Dawn, argued that it’s not for him or his generation of artists such as Beres Hammond to make the difference as they’ve already made their mark.
“I know music is generational you know but what is this generation getting from this music? I cant I say I want to be on top, I can’t be on top, my generation did do what dem suppose to do! What your generation a do?” he remarked.
Last month, Banton announced that he would soon release his 12th studio album. The announcement came almost two years after he released the Grammy-nominated 20-track Upside Down 2020 , which was his first in a decade, and 15 months after he re-released his US Gold-selling Til Shiloh album, which was originally put out in 1995.
After the spirited performance, Buju shared the experience on social media this week, thanking the Love and Harmony committee for what he said was “so much fun.”
“Big respect to Love And Harmony crew … I had so much fun playing this music for you all….”, he wrote in the caption for one of two posts.
The Love and Harmony Cruise lineup this year also saw performances from Beenie Man, Beres Hammond, Wayne Wonder, Nadine Sutherland, Cocoa Tea, and Edwin Yearwood. The cruise took sail; departing Fort Lauderdale to Ocho Rios Jamaica then went on to Nassau, Bahamas.