Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

Ras Michael took a lot of the songs people had been singing in the Pentecostal churches, and slowed them right down, and used these Nyabinghi drums. So, he was singing these church songs, and rebuilding them from the way they were being used in the church. I thought it was really amazing for him to actually do that, and for the Rastas in Jamaica to use these type of songs. When I first heard this record, I was high smoking weed from a chalice pipe, and to me that was church! Anytime me and my brethren would sit around, we’d get a chalice pipe on, and just get high listening to the music. We really believed all that stuff, you know? The way Ras Michael would deliver the lyrics talking about Zion and Babylon, it was really life-changing stuff.

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