He is par­tic­u­lar when it comes to his art – an enig­ma. After keep­ing a low pro­file for five years, releas­ing scarce­ly any­thing under his own name and play­ing only a hand­ful of shows, he sud­den­ly drops an album with almost no warn­ing: a record that pays homage to reg­gae tra­di­tion, stands shoul­der to shoul­der with the greats, and still man­ages to rethink the genre. But instead of pro­mot­ing it to the hilt, he grants almost no inter­views, doesn’t go on tour, and oth­er­wise con­tin­ues to keep his dis­tance from the pub­lic eye. To give ”Exile” the appre­ci­a­tion it deserves, Ellen Köh­lings and Pete Lil­ly combed through past inter­views and sub­ject­ed Chronixx’s songs to a close read­ing.

Text: Ellen Köh­lings & Pete Lil­ly /// Pho­tos: William Richards

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”Music is not a man made thing. It wasn’t a man who bring music into this dimen­sion. It’s a God giv­en thing. It’s like your inspi­ra­tion, it’s like sight. Me know music is just anoth­er sense.” (Chronixx 2015)

When The Tides Were So High And Strong

Not long ago, the lush land­scape here glowed in vibrant green. Bright­ly paint­ed wood­en huts added splash­es of colour, and even the small­est vil­lages buzzed with activ­i­ty. Now, as far as the eye can see, stretch­es a grey-brown waste­land lit­tered with bare branch­es, top­pled pow­er poles, uproot­ed trees, roofs torn off, walls col­lapsed, win­dows shat­tered, house­hold belong­ings scat­tered about… Des­o­late scenes, under­scored by con­sol­ing words and heal­ing music.

Reels like these, doc­u­ment­ing the cat­a­stro­phe, move from one Chronixx track to the next. The rapid pulse of the dig­i­tal feed is slowed by the pull of an ana­logue pro­duc­tion and a famil­iar voice – one that hasn’t been this present in years, yet now seems to be the life­line an entire nation is grasp­ing for. The apoc­a­lyp­tic scale of the dev­as­ta­tion, the sheer suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple, cries out for a coun­ter­bal­ance.

”When the tides were so high and strong
You gave me shel­ter from the rain
On an open and rag­ing sea
You res­cued me”
(”Hur­ri­cane”)

On Octo­ber 28, the Cat­e­go­ry 5 mon­ster Melis­sa made land­fall on Jamaica’s south coast with extreme wind speeds of over 300 kilo­me­ters per hour and a min­i­mum cen­tral pres­sure of bare­ly 900 hec­topas­cals, mak­ing it one of the strongest hur­ri­canes ever record­ed in the Atlantic. Two and a half weeks ear­li­er, on Octo­ber 10 – his 33rd birth­day – Chronixx had released ”Exile,” his sec­ond album, a 17-track fol­low-up to his debut ”Chronol­o­gy”. Chronixx seems to pos­sess a prophet­ic gift: unwit­ting­ly, he has cre­at­ed the heal­ing sound­track to the most mas­sive, human-made nat­ur­al dis­as­ter ever to strike Jamaica. His prayer­ful track ”Hur­ri­cane” plays on an end­less loop across Insta­gram feeds. Inter­spersed are ”Resilient,” a call to inner strength wrapped in a love song, the sur­vival anthem ”Sur­vivor,” and the uplift­ing, hope-bear­ing ”Keep On Ris­ing.”

”And you inspired the best in me
So I could stand for what I believe
Gave me peace that sur­pas­seth all
Eter­ni­ty”
(”Hur­ri­cane”)

There is some­thing prophet­ic even in the album cov­er, if you fol­low the singer’s far-sight­ed gaze into the dis­tance. His grainy pro­file occu­pies half of the earth-toned art­work. To the left, a dirt road; above it, a sun­set beneath a cloud­ed sky – no title, no artist name, noth­ing to dis­tract. In keep­ing with the music, the pho­to­graph, too, car­ries a sense of calm.

Before the release, Chronixx said that ”Exile” was made for Jamaica. At the time, no one on the island could have imag­ined just how deeply they would come to need the album’s sooth­ing, uplift­ing, and poet­ic words, or its warm­ly com­fort­ing ana­logue sound. The Jamaican pho­tog­ra­ph­er Sabriya Simon wrote the fol­low­ing about the album in a com­men­tary on Insta­gram: ”May many now over­stand that this is part­ly what sacred devo­tion and sacred ser­vice – to one­Self, to fam­i­ly, to the earth, to love, to pur­pose and to the Almighty – look, sound and feel like – all in divine time. May the light med­i­cine of this offer­ing be received in a mighty way by all who need it.” Right now many seem to need this med­i­cine. Kaba­ka Pyra­mid calls ”Exile” ”music for a true vibra­tional shift, for souls and not the indus­try.” Roy­al Blu attests that Chronixx‘ music makes God smile.

Nah Follow Nobody

We rec­og­nized Chronixx as an excep­tion­al tal­ent ear­ly on. First releas­es such as ”Start A Fyah,” ”Odd Ras,” ”They Don’t Know,” and ”Here Comes Trou­ble” were instant hits. The Major Laz­er mix­tape ”Start A Fyah,” curat­ed by Wal­shy Fire, was our per­son­al album of the year in 2013. At a 2014 per­for­mance com­mem­o­rat­ing Lit­tle Joe – the founder of the Jah Ova Evil move­ment, through which Chronixx first became a singer – we had the dis­tinct feel­ing we were wit­ness­ing a super­star in the mak­ing. And we were clear­ly not alone: the inter­est shown by fig­ures such as Chris Black­well, Mick Jag­ger, and Amer­i­can late-night host Jim­my Fal­lon spoke vol­umes. The first offered him a pub­lish­ing deal ear­ly on. The sec­ond, on his own birth­day in 2014, made a point of catch­ing a Chronixx con­cert in New York’s Cen­tral Park. The third invit­ed him onto his show three times – in 2014, 2017, and 2020. Com­par­isons to Bob Mar­ley were not long in com­ing. When we cel­e­brat­ed his debut ”Chronol­o­gy” as an ”album of the cen­tu­ry” in RIDDIM in 2017, we were wide­ly crit­i­cized – yet by now it’s beyond dis­pute that the record raised the bar for mod­ern reg­gae pro­duc­tions to a lev­el that only few have reached since.

But from the very begin­ning, Chronixx resist­ed com­mer­cial suc­cess. When Jamaica’s Min­istry of Cul­ture host­ed the mini-fes­ti­val ”Arts In The Park” in Kingston’s Hope Gar­dens in 2013 – an event designed to show­case promis­ing acts like Pro­to­je, Rag­ing Fyah, and Nomad­dz to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of U.S. record labels – Chronixx deliv­ered what may have been the most aggres­sive per­for­mance of his career. He kicked out, issued unmis­tak­able dec­la­ra­tions, and rapped more than he sang. He made it abun­dant­ly clear that he had no inter­est in being signed by any­one in atten­dance.

In an inter­view con­duct­ed just two months lat­er, ahead of his con­cert at Wuppertal’s U‑Club, he vent­ed his frus­tra­tion with the music indus­try and the expec­ta­tions placed upon him. ”Music is pure, the indus­try is cor­rupt, it’s demon­ic. It is neg­a­tive, because if all that you exult is neg­a­tive, that mean you are neg­a­tive. Me bun dem indus­try, man, me blaze it. Right now if I could kill some indus­try peo­ple me do it. Selassie I know! Ah Jah real­ly man­i­fest through me and make me into a bet­ter youth, too and light­en me heart against cer­tain peo­ple. Because the music nah go reach far with cer­tain peo­ple walk­ing among us. Me no signed to no label. No label man can bring no con­tract and gi’ me, me spit pon it. Me nah fol­low nobody! The only peo­ple who me take argu­ment from is musi­cian. My friends are musi­cians, my fam­i­ly are musi­cians.” He wast­ed no time offer­ing the ratio­nale behind his stance: ”It is said that Chronixx is hype and dem put me up on a pedastal now fi some­body start shoot arrows off ah me. But hear wha gwaan, me no deh pon nobody pedestal nei­ther. So it’s an emp­ty pedestal dem have up deh. Them can call me up for a medal and me not going for it. Because I don’t want no medal, no tro­phy from Baby­lon!”

Chronixx has nev­er sought the spot­light. When Rihan­na approached him for a col­lab­o­ra­tion on her long-promised but nev­er-released reg­gae album, he report­ed­ly – accord­ing to a mem­ber of his team at the time – polite­ly declined, say­ing he wouldn’t help a mil­lion­aire sell lin­gerie. The notion that he might one day with­draw from pub­lic life was there­fore embed­ded in him from ear­ly on.

Short­ly after the start of the pan­dem­ic, he pulled his announced sec­ond album, ”Dela Splash” – exten­sive­ly dis­cussed in RIDDIM 02/20 – and shift­ed his focus to his still-new role as a father. The man­age­ment team of close friends that had tak­en care of him from the very begin­ning and grown along­side his career dis­solved, as did the ZincFence Band, with whom Chronixx had spent eight years tour­ing the world. Those close to him say he nev­er stopped mak­ing music. He is said to have record­ed mul­ti­ple albums, yet only a hand­ful of fea­tures and his work with SAULT – projects that don’t even bear his name – have sur­faced. More on that lat­er. Over the past five years, he has played scarce­ly more than a hand­ful of shows.

See at the end of this story:
Ten Big Tunes Featuring Chronixx That You May Never Have Heard Of 

Oth­er­wise, Chronixx appeared only through his pas­sion project, the Jam­Coders Sum­mer Camp. Launched and fund­ed by him in 2022, it is a work­shop series at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West Indies that teach­es pupils and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents how to code and intro­duces them to algo­rithms. Great empha­sis is placed on crit­i­cal think­ing.

”Com­ing with dem sci­ence with dem tech­nol­o­gy, that’s fine
Cause woie Jah Jah chil­dren have sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy long time well
Com­ing with them false doc­trines
Them mis-edu­ca­tion, well that’s fine
Cause woie Jah Jah chil­dren have reli­gion and edu­ca­tion long time”
(”Don’t Be Afraid”)

Movement of Jah People

The album title ”Exile” inevitably calls to mind Chronixx’s appar­ent ”inward emi­gra­tion” over the past five years. As he said on David Rodigan’s BBC 1Xtra radio show: ”I felt like there was a point when the whole world kind of with­drew. I felt like I had to extend my thing. And my main expe­ri­ence was pur­su­ing music, try­ing to become the artist I always want­ed to become. And that became so cru­cial and impor­tant to me to a point where I just couldn’t wait any­more. I was like I need to go now and prac­tice, go into the stu­dio and start read­ing, study­ing every­thing about even my music. Because then I would come to Lon­don and every­body knew every­thing about Reg­gae music, except us, you know, as the younger ones. So I’m just like, we can’t con­tin­ue like this, we have to be part of the con­ver­sa­tion gen­uine­ly. Not just because we are Jamaican or because we look the way we look or we say the thing that we say. But we have actu­al­ly be con­ver­sa­tion ready.”

The singer makes it clear that the album title ”Exile” does not refer to him­self, but to the five years between 1936 and 1941 that Ethiopi­an Emper­or Haile Selassie I spent in exile in Bath, Eng­land, coor­di­nat­ing resis­tance to Mussolini’s inva­sion of his coun­try. One way or anoth­er, the title inevitably invites com­par­i­son with Bob Marley’s mil­len­ni­al clas­sic ”Exo­dus”, whose name rings strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar. On one lev­el, that album can be read through the lens of Bob’s own sto­ry – his exile in Eng­land after the assas­si­na­tion attempt on him in Decem­ber 1976. On anoth­er, ”Exo­dus” speaks to some­thing larg­er: the repa­tri­a­tion of the descen­dants of enslaved Africans to the Moth­er­land, mir­ror­ing the depar­ture of the Israelites from Egypt toward the Promised Land.

Like ”Nat­ur­al Mys­tic”, the open­ing track of ”Exo­dus”, the title track ”Exile” emerges only grad­u­al­ly from a dis­tance, swelling slow­ly before reveal­ing its full force. Fur­ther obvi­ous par­al­lels between the two albums are of a son­ic nature. Con­sid­er, for instance, the har­mon­ic, rhyth­mic, and melod­ic kin­ship between Chronixx’s ”I Know What You Feel­in’” and ”Wait­ing in Vain”. ”Keep On Ris­ing” seems direct­ly inspired by the unmis­tak­able Bar­rett broth­ers’ one-drop groove heard in ”So Much Things to Say”. Like­wise, ”I and I” feels musi­cal­ly indebt­ed to ”Guilti­ness”. Yet despite the unmis­tak­able influ­ence of ”Exo­dus” on ”Exile”, Chronixx nev­er relin­quish­es his own iden­ti­ty. He has inter­nalised the reg­gae tra­di­tion of the 1970s and shaped some­thing entire­ly his own from it. Rather than rely­ing on sam­ples or cov­er ver­sions, he sus­tains a spir­it – car­ry­ing it for­ward and pulling it into the present.

As ear­ly as 2016, Chronixx impressed upon us – straight into the recorder – the neces­si­ty of pre­serv­ing reg­gae for future gen­er­a­tions, while adding that not every­one was des­tined to take on that task: ”Don’t make nobody fool you, ah no every man can do Reg­gae. Reg­gae is a soul music. And ah no every man have the soul. But for who find them­selves blessed with that soul, have to pre­serve that music.”

At the time, he did not yet feel the call to ful­ly embrace the task. He flirt­ed with con­tem­po­rary dance­hall and var­i­ous pop influ­ences. His nev­er-released album ”Dela Splash” was still marked by dark trap scapes.

Now Chronixx steps ful­ly into that man­tle. ”Exile” res­onates with echoes not only of Bob Mar­ley but of roots leg­ends like Burn­ing Spear – ”Don’t Be Afraid” unfurls with regal fan­fares over a relent­less step­pers pulse. Gre­go­ry Isaacs’ seduc­tive Lover’s Rock res­onates in ”Sweet Argu­ment”. The airy instru­men­tal of ”Schem­ing” recalls the effort­less grace of a Stu­dio One ses­sion by the Soul Ven­dors, while the organ on ”Fam­i­ly First” feels as though Jack­ie Mit­too him­self were trac­ing its keys. Even where the album’s con­nec­tions to reg­gae his­to­ry are less obvi­ous, ”Exile” breathes the spir­it and soul of the genre’s gold­en era.

Return­ing once more to the com­par­i­son with ”Exo­dus”: like Chronixx’s album, Marley’s Lon­don-record­ed work sound­ed marked­ly dif­fer­ent from Jamaican reg­gae when it was released in 1977. ”Exile”, too, marks a break while hon­our­ing tra­di­tion, set­ting itself apart from con­tem­po­rary trends. In a man­ner rem­i­nis­cent of Marley’s play­ful exper­i­men­ta­tion with blues, soul, and British rock, Chronixx flirts with clas­sic Black music styles – gospel, soul, funk, and dis­co – and in the deeply mov­ing ”Hur­ri­cane”, even with the folk of the Amer­i­can civ­il rights move­ment as embod­ied by Bob Dylan. All of these are roots-based gen­res, which, as with the King of Reg­gae, ulti­mate­ly bow to a Caribbean off­beat. The para­dox is that ”Exile”, despite its nods to nos­tal­gia, sounds utter­ly fresh – if noth­ing else, as a wel­come coun­ter­point to today’s music, dom­i­nat­ed by algo­rithms, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and the demands of stream­ing plat­forms.

Anuh Everybody A Go Like We

Where­as ”Chronol­o­gy”, with tracks like ”Skankin’ Sweet”, ”Smile Jamaica”, or ”Likes”, still sound­ed radio-friend­ly, pol­ished, and clear­ly struc­tured – car­ry­ing a cer­tain pop appeal – Chronixx no longer con­cerns him­self with such con­ven­tions. ”Exile” is a let­ting go of norms, a push­back against the strate­gies of the music indus­try, a delib­er­ate refusal to be com­mod­i­fied. It is a musi­cal stream of con­scious­ness, a con­scious­ly qui­et and intro­spec­tive, yet no less res­olute, man­i­festo of per­son­al free­dom – raw and ten­der at once. Meet­ing expec­ta­tions is now less than ever his aim, which per­haps explains, along­side the wide­spread acclaim, some of the resis­tance the album has encoun­tered.

Loos­ened, uncon­ven­tion­al – or at least acquired-taste – song struc­tures, fluc­tu­a­tions in vol­ume, tape hiss, ambi­ent noise, and room acoustics chal­lenge lis­ten­ing habits and can at times cause irri­ta­tion. Some lis­ten­ers may miss obvi­ous hits. The songs some­times feel unfin­ished or sketch-like, the pro­duc­tion rough, imper­fect. Yet it is pre­cise­ly these qual­i­ties that give the album its dis­tinc­tive authen­tic­i­ty, its vin­tage charm, a sense of imme­di­a­cy, and pull us deep into the world of its cre­ator. The album’s pro­duc­er, Lon­don­er Dean Josi­ah Cov­er, aka Inflo, like­ly played a sig­nif­i­cant role in shap­ing its char­ac­ter.

Start A Universal Love Trend

Inflo, until now vir­tu­al­ly unknown in the reg­gae cos­mos, is pri­mar­i­ly rec­og­nized for his work with Lit­tle Simz, Adele, and his wife Cleo Sol, who is also involved in his enig­mat­ic music col­lec­tive SAULT (an acronym for ”Start A Uni­ver­sal Love Trend”). The man seems to fear no musi­cal bound­aries. His range spans British indie rock, bom­bas­tic hip-hop pro­duc­tion, vin­tage soul, raw punk, choral gospel, clas­si­cal music, orches­tral broad­band scores, and even musi­cal and operetta inter­ludes. Essen­tial­ly, he cov­ers the entire spec­trum of Black music – and then some. This has earned him com­par­isons to a young Quin­cy Jones. R&B super-pro­duc­er Jim­my Jam says that Inflo turns every­thing he touch­es into the best music pos­si­ble. Adele recalls marathon five-hour ”ther­a­py ses­sions” with him, in which he drew out feel­ings she didn’t know she had, trans­form­ing them into some of her most intense songs. Before Lit­tle Simz end­ed their long-stand­ing friend­ship over finan­cial dis­putes ear­li­er this year and has since com­mu­ni­cat­ed with him only via lawyers, she described their musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion as a fear­less exchange, a push­ing of bound­aries root­ed in pro­found mutu­al trust.

Inflo’s ethos is per­haps most evi­dent in SAULT, a col­lec­tive of extra­or­di­nar­i­ly tal­ent­ed artists and musi­cians whose names and faces remain large­ly hid­den. Unless you study the cred­its close­ly, you wouldn’t know that the vocals come from Cleo Sol, Lit­tle Simz, Michael Kiwanu­ka – or Chronixx him­self. In Novem­ber 2022, SAULT dropped five rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent albums in a sin­gle day – ”11”, ”Unti­tled (God)”, ”Earth”, ”AIIR”, and ”Today & Tomor­row” – a bril­liant move to under­mine mar­ketabil­i­ty and defy the machi­na­tions of the music indus­try. Rather than explain­ing them­selves in inter­views, Inflo lets the music speak, and it speaks clear­ly. The 2020 album ”Unti­tled (Black Is)”, whose min­i­mal cov­er fea­tures a Black Pow­er fist on a black back­ground, became a sound­track for the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment. Black­ness – as a con­fi­dent, unapolo­getic, yet non-aggres­sive state­ment, a form of empow­er­ment against ram­pant, dan­ger­ous white suprema­cy – is cen­tral to the work of SAULT, Inflo, and Chronixx alike. The Jamaican first appeared in con­nec­tion with SAULT on ”Angel”, a ten-minute blues-gospel-spo­ken-word opus from Octo­ber 2022, reflect­ing on the life and death of a soul rebel in the wake of George Floyd’s mur­der. The track is divid­ed into seem­ing­ly dis­parate musi­cal seg­ments, yet it flows as a cohe­sive nar­ra­tive. Since then, Chronixx is fea­tured on near­ly every SAULT release. On the punk-infused ”Mon­ey”, he sounds more like the Dead Kennedys than Bob Mar­ley. In keep­ing with the collective’s ethos, the singer remained cir­cum­spect in his com­ments to Rodi­gan: ”Well, SAULT is the music of SAULT. So any­one who wants to know about SAULT, they just should go and lis­ten to their tunes.”

In the same breath, he says of his own album: ”All the cre­atives, who played on my album – Cleo Sol, my bredrin Inflo, Kelis­sa, my father Chron­i­cal, all the musi­cians – it was a deep spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence for all of us, where our faith was test­ed. Every­thing was test­ed. So for us, we have already got­ten what we want­ed from the music. So the next step was to make it avail­able for peo­ple to lis­ten. We always knew that this was a music of ser­vice. After ‘Chronol­o­gy’ was ful­ly writ­ten on Fruity Loop, I knew that this step that we was tak­ing was a step upwards, so that we could do music for ser­vice, which mean it was­n’t about our style, our capa­bil­i­ties, our tal­ents, it was just about us show­ing up with the faith and know­ing that we are work­ing for Jah fe get instruc­tion and guid­ance. While we were mak­ing this music all of us got test­ed. There was one time our engi­neer, she gave birth in the mid­dle of the pro­duc­tion, being nine months preg­nant, work­ing on music. She was just so into it, and livi­cat­ed to the cause and to the mis­sion – like all of us were.”

Upon the release of ”Nev­er Give Up” in April 2022 – the first joint release by the artist and pro­duc­er, lat­er remas­tered for ”Exile” – Inflo wrote on Insta­gram about Chronixx: ”Thanks to the real Gen­er­al for intro­duc­ing me to mak­ing music with fam­i­ly in the room, I feel blessed to come into your world, work­ing with you is heal­ing.”

After their joint con­cert in Lon­don in August this year, he also took to Insta­gram, writ­ing: ”Chronixx – the prophet I’m so inspired by you and your integri­ty and pres­ence, your com­mit­ment to fam­i­ly and music. Your jour­ney is spir­i­tu­al, and any­one who is around you becomes a bet­ter human. Thank you for being here.”

God’s Love, Resilient

Back in our first inter­view in ear­ly 2013, the then 19-year-old Chronixx, sport­ing short stub­by dread­locks, explained to us the role of ”wor­ship leader” that he had assumed at the age of 13 in the Light­house Assem­bly Church of God in De La Vega City, a neigh­bour­hood of Span­ish Town. ”A wor­ship-leader is a dif­fer­ent lev­el now from choir. Because a wor­ship-leader would start the ser­vice. And that role now was assigned to me at a very young age. And to be a wor­ship-leader in church, you had to hold a cer­tain lev­el of med­i­ta­tion. Because you lead peo­ple into wor­ship. It is the same with reg­gae music, you know? Bob Mar­ley had to hold a cer­tain lev­el of med­i­ta­tion, because he was lead­ing peo­ple out of what they’re in into some­thing new. So that prin­ci­ple, I bring it over into reg­gae music, because you don’t just go and sing to peo­ple and expect peo­ple to feel good, you know? You have to go up there with a spir­it and a sen­sa­tion. So when­ev­er I hold the mic, I know that some­body in the audi­ence came here under a cer­tain vibe and I can’t make them go home under that same vibe. I have to free up them spir­it a likkle.”

”If I ever for­get to hold your hand
I know it can feel like for­ev­er we’ve been strug­gling
Jah love is our strength
Togeth­er we’re resilient”
(”Resilient”)

The sev­en-minute-and-twen­ty-sec­ond ”Resilient” is a mov­ing dec­la­ra­tion of a man’s deep love for a woman – a love whose strength, endurance, and resilience draw from the uncon­di­tion­al love of God for human­i­ty. Stretch­ing over sev­en min­utes and twen­ty sec­onds, ”Resilient” is a heart­felt tes­ta­ment to a man’s pro­found love for a woman – a love whose pow­er and per­se­ver­ance are root­ed in the uncon­di­tion­al love of God for humankind.

A soli­tary, ten­der­ly plucked acoustic gui­tar bare­ly ris­es above the back­ground hiss. A whis­pered, emo­tive ”Huhuhuhuhu” joins in, and then Chronixx begins, as if spon­ta­neous­ly by a camp­fire, to declare his love. About a third of the way in, the female har­monies grad­u­al­ly swell, and Chronixx adds more inten­si­ty to his voice before, halfway through, ced­ing much of the stage to the back­ing singers – ”God’s love resilient,” repeat­ed end­less­ly like a mantra. At 5:30, the gui­tar falls silent. The now fer­vent choir erupts into an intense, increas­ing­ly unre­strained canon, accom­pa­nied only by enthu­si­as­tic clap­ping. We are in a church, seat­ed right in the midst of it. The atmos­phere esca­lates to ecsta­sy, before the sud­den silence hurls us back into the here and now.

Accord­ing to Chronixx, ”Resilient” was the first song he record­ed for the album. It is also one of the tracks that has drawn crit­i­cism for sound­ing like unmas­tered demo record­ings – a charge Chronixx had already addressed in a 2015 inter­view in Lon­don, when we spoke to him about the poor audio qual­i­ty of some reg­gae pro­duc­tions. ”I wouldn’t play music based pon the mas­ter­ing. I would play music that peo­ple love. That’s the thing with Reg­gae. When you go ah dance­hall some song sound loud and then the next one not so loud, some mas­tered, some unmas­tered. But it nice, it have a vibe. Good har­monies, good melodies, good words, good music, good musi­cian­ship that to me is more impor­tant than the mix­ing to tell you the truth. Because by mix­ing the song, you ah risk spoil­ing the vibe. Me just no both­er take the risk. But hear what me do: Some­time me just no both­er mix it (laughs). Cause some­times the gui­tar by itself, it sounds so nice, it record in the right room through the right amp and you won’t go drown it out with too much reverb. Nuff of Bob Mar­ley music dem, you lis­ten the vocals dry. You lis­ten to some Burn­ing Spear, is nut­ting dere pon di gui­tar. I have a very good mic, very close to my bed­room. So if in the morn­ing a song come to you and that demo is good enough, I don’t need to go and record it in a bet­ter stu­dio. So if the demo is nice, you keep it.”

Mi And Mi Baby Mama Guh A Market

When we arranged to meet Chronixx for an inter­view back then, he made us wait because he need­ed to do some gro­cery shop­ping – he was stay­ing with an aunt rather than in a hotel and was tak­ing care of his own meals. Two hours lat­er, he arrived at the agreed meet­ing spot and apol­o­gized, explain­ing that a super­mar­ket trip always takes him a lit­tle longer, as he reads the ingre­di­ents of every prod­uct and nev­er buys any­thing con­tain­ing preser­v­a­tives. Chronixx has there­fore long placed great impor­tance on healthy eat­ing. Dur­ing his Cap­ture Land tour across Jamaica that same year, only Ital food was served, and no alco­hol was offered.

After ”Plant It” and ”Spir­uli­na”, ”Mar­ket” once again turns its atten­tion to what we put into our bod­ies – this time wrapped in cool sto­ry­telling in clas­sic ’80s dance­hall style, pep­pered with digres­sions and asides, all deliv­ered like a freestyle. Over a laid-back, bounc­ing funk instru­men­tal from The Meters, Chronixx sets the scene: he and his baby moth­er are head­ing to the mar­ket, bustling like a Stone Love dance. In clas­sic dee­jay style, he lists every­thing that goes into the shop­ping bas­ket – with the Empress always hav­ing the final say. He laments the high price of callaloo, excused by a cer­tain Miss Mar­jorie as a result of infla­tion – times are hard. Chronixx inserts a brief eco­nom­ic com­men­tary before mov­ing into a spo­ken-word sec­tion, equat­ing strug­gling farm­ers with the orig­i­nal dee­jays and name-check­ing artists like Nicode­mus, Bur­ro Ban­ton, Ear­ly B, and Super­cat. He pref­aces this with a descrip­tion of a per­for­mance sce­nario now most­ly found at old-school dances: He sets the scene like an old-school dance: dee­jays chat­ting until dawn, nev­er run­ning out of lyrics. ”Mar­ket” is built in this same end­less-flow spir­it – the tune could keep going for a hun­dred more vers­es and still demand a for­ward.

Chronixx’s father, Selvin McNaughton – bet­ter known as Chron­i­cle, an ’80s and ’90s dance­hall singer, whose song ”Sweet Argu­ment” Chronixx now cov­ers – told the Jamaican news­pa­per The Glean­er short­ly after the release of ”Exile” that he had tak­en his son to the stu­dio at just three months old. ”I car­ry two nip­ple bot­tles, all three some­times, cause him love him food. I just hold him in my hand and ride with him on the bicy­cle and go a stu­dio. Dirts­man and Gary Minott… a him two god­fa­ther dem deh. I teach him the music from when him don’t even under­stand the music… but mi just mek sure that it soak inna him.” Prac­ti­cal­ly with his mother’s milk.

”Rib­bit!” In the sec­ond half of the song, Chronixx launch­es into a full-scale cri­tique. He calls out com­pa­nies like Mon­san­to, who patent genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds, ruin­ing farm­ers and even ren­der­ing their har­vests ined­i­ble for Chronixx. Instead, he cham­pi­ons herbal teas and what nature pro­vides at his doorstep: sour­sop, lychee, bread­fruit, limes… He cel­e­brates Ital cui­sine and con­cludes with a reminder that the best things in life are free – ”gluten free, dairy free.” Humor, wis­dom, and activism col­lide seam­less­ly, a tes­ta­ment to a musi­cal lin­eage steeped in con­science and care.

Family First

It was just before sun­set on a Feb­ru­ary day in 2020 when we last encoun­tered Chronixx. He stood on the ter­race of Sky­line Lev­els high above Kingston, with his wife Kelis­sa and their daugh­ter, not yet a year old, gaz­ing at the city bathed in red-orange light, wait­ing for the sun to sink into the sea beyond. A rare priv­i­lege, to wit­ness such a pri­vate moment. A moment, he told us then, that the young fam­i­ly had turned into an evening rit­u­al when­ev­er the singer wasn’t on tour. He held his daugh­ter in his arms, ten­der­ly explain­ing the nat­ur­al sounds that reached a crescen­do at dusk. He imi­tat­ed bird calls and chirp­ing crick­ets – sounds he had pre­vi­ous­ly told us inspired his music. On ”Exile”, they appear unfil­tered in ”Hur­ri­cane”. Short­ly after this encounter, a virus trig­gered a world­wide lock­down, which at least gave Chronixx the chance to ful­ly savor such inti­mate moments with his loved ones.

Five years lat­er, the song ”Fam­i­ly First” seems to answer the ques­tion of why Chronixx with­drew from the pub­lic eye. Over a light­ly swing­ing lo-fi ear­ly-reg­gae rid­dim with a vin­tage sound, he cel­e­brates fam­i­ly as the foun­da­tion of a thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ty. It is pre­cise­ly through its beau­ti­ful imper­fec­tion that the song radi­ates a ten­der­ness free­ing its cre­ator from any hint of con­ser­vatism. Fam­i­ly here is not meant in the Chris­t­ian-demo­c­ra­t­ic sense of a soci­etal nucle­us. Chronixx’s under­stand­ing of fam­i­ly extends beyond father, moth­er, and child; his focus is on care for one anoth­er and the love shared, rather than on blood ties.

Love Is On The Mountain

One could under­take a close read­ing of every sin­gle track on the album – we could go on for­ev­er. From ”Exile” to ”Love Is On The Moun­tain”, it has left us pos­i­tive­ly over­whelmed, even though it is any­thing but intru­sive. Direct­ed at his fel­low Jamaicans yet expressed in a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, it draws anoth­er par­al­lel to Bob Mar­ley. Lyri­cal­ly, Chronixx delib­er­ate­ly holds back. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in the nine-minute ”Gen­e­sis”, which, despite its title brim­ming with asso­ci­a­tions, con­tains bare­ly 80 words. The oth­er songs are sim­i­lar­ly spar­ing, nev­er feel­ing over­stuffed. The album is like an oasis of calm in an era of infor­ma­tion over­load. Only ”Mar­ket,” with its nod to a dance­hall freestyle, works with sev­er­al longer vers­es. Oth­er­wise, the tracks rely pri­mar­i­ly on rep­e­ti­tion, cre­at­ing mem­o­rable pat­terns that func­tion as affir­ma­tions. This rhetor­i­cal device is employed so skill­ful­ly and so fre­quent­ly that it becomes an art form in itself. In their spare­ness and rep­e­ti­tion, the songs resem­ble prayers – invo­ca­tions to the Most High. In gen­er­al, the lyrics leave plen­ty of room to breathe. Like the music, they draw their strength from sim­plic­i­ty, yet their mes­sages remain com­plex and lay­ered.

”Your love is like music to my soul
Our jour­ney is like poet­ry
Love is our des­tiny”
(”Gen­e­sis”)

Even before its release, Chronixx was hailed as reggae’s sav­iour. That this mis­sion is close to his heart is evi­dent to any­one pay­ing atten­tion. ”Exile” radi­ates a deep love for the genre, reflect­ed most clear­ly in his metic­u­lous engage­ment with its his­to­ry and tra­di­tions. Yet Chronixx is dri­ven not only by his devo­tion to reg­gae and Black music as a whole, but by love in all its forms – inter­per­son­al, uncon­di­tion­al, uni­ver­sal – a con­nec­tion to and a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Jah. With ”Exile”, he places him­self in Jah’s ser­vice: Music for Ser­vice.

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”Exile” has been released dig­i­tal­ly and on vinyl via Inflo’s label, For­ev­er Liv­ing Orig­i­nals.

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