Buju Banton

Buju Banton was finishing a pot of oats porridge in a Brooklyn basement over three decades ago when Bob Marley's 'Forever Loving Jah' came on and the friend he was with broke down crying. 'It's a powerful song, don't mess with it,' he told The Quietus in 2020, naming it among his all-time favourites. He didn't just listen: in 2001, producer Donovan Germain built 'I Dare Not Be Ungrateful' on Marley's own arrangement, and Buju sang its title line as, in his own words, 'a continuation of The Wailers singing "we'll be forever loving Jah."'

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1980

Forever Loving JahBob Marley

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2001

I Dare Not Be UngratefulBuju Banton

listen forThe two records share more than a theme. Producer Donovan Germain built 'I Dare Not Be Ungrateful' on Marley's own unhurried, guitar-led frame, and put Leroy Sibbles back on the mic to sing it, just as he had on the Wailers original. Where Marley intones 'we'll be forever loving Jah,' Buju answers a generation later with 'I dare not be ungrateful to Jah' — phrasing close enough to register as a reply, not a cover, riding a riddim built to feel inherited rather than borrowed.

Buju Banton doesn't hedge about who set the template. 'Yellowman influenced all of us,' he told The Quietus in 2020, naming him the 'true teacher for the dancehall massive' who taught an entire generation — Shabba Ranks, Admiral Bailey, 'even I and I' — how to work a crowd. The debt is traceable to the note: ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall's decade-spanning tracking of Yellowman's 1982 singsong 'Zunguzung' melody logs Buju re-singing that same phrase on 1993's 'Big It Up,' one of dozens of dancehall and hip-hop records that borrowed it.

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1982

ZunguzungunguzunguzengYellowman

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1993

Big It UpBuju Banton

listen forYellowman built 'Zunguzungunguzunguzeng' around a short, sung-not-spoken hook, more melody than chat — and that's exactly what surfaces inside 'Big It Up,' where Buju drops his rapid-fire toast to voice the same rise-and-fall phrase over a completely different riddim. It isn't a sample; Marshall's research notes that Buju, like most artists on his list, re-sang rather than looped the line, proof the phrase had become dancehall vocabulary rather than just a Yellowman record.

Before he had a record deal, Mark Myrie had already made his tribute permanent, building his stage name around it: Banton, 'a revered storyteller,' as GRAMMY.com later explained, 'in tribute to the deejay Burro Banton, whom he admired as a child.' It's the most literal influence claim in his catalogue — not a sound copied but a name worn for life. Wikipedia's own account, tracing to Dave Thompson's book Reggae & Caribbean Music, adds that the young Buju 'emulated Burro's rough vocals and forceful delivery' before he found his own.

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1990

Boom Wah DisBurro Banton

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1994

ChampionBuju Banton

listen forThere's no shared lyric or riddim to point to here, only a family resemblance in delivery. Burro Banton's signature 'Boom Wah Dis' rides his voice hard and low, gruff enough to sound aggressive even mid-boast; Buju's 1994 single 'Champion' works that same register, chewing through 'walk like a champion, talk like a champion' with a similarly forceful, unsmiling attack. It's the sound of a name being lived up to, not a specific record being answered.