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Damian Marley and Nas: Roots, Rap, Reggae!

For Damian, who on three previous albums has fused his family’s roots reggae with his love for dancehall and hip-hop, Distant Relatives finds him stretching himself as a singer and producer. Lyrically, it’s the most consistently serious album he’s ever made. Gone—for now—are the party songs, the sexy songs, the “spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down,” as he calls them, referencing—of all things—the film Mary Poppins.

For Nas, a revered MC who emerged at the tail end of the golden age of hip-hop, the making of Distant Relatives firmly nudged him out of his comfort zone, forcing him to write verses to samples of traditional African music and to live jams created in the studio by Marley’s band, The Council. “I always think about what will push me to grow,” he says, “and a project like this—something so cultural—wouldn’t necessarily be like any of my other projects. This is totally different. This is for people who don’t normally listen to me. It’s for the world.”

Originally envisioned as an EP, Distant Relatives’ title refers to the common ancestry shared by descendants of the African Diaspora. The album, since its inception, took almost two years to finish. In that time, Nas saw the birth of Knight, his son with singer Kelis, and the dissolution of their marriage—the strain of which, he admits, can be heard in some of his verses. (Knight’s due date, coincidentally, was also Damian’s 30th birthday.) Distant Relatives catches both artists at pivotal times in their lives: Nas at a personal crossroads and Damian at a professional turning point.

If his older sibling Ziggy’s “Tomorrow People” trumpeted the arrival of a second generation of Marley music for the masses in the late 1980s, then Welcome to Jamrock reaffirmed and re-imagined that legacy for a third generation nearly two decades later. His dreadlocks may fall below his knees, but his voice owes little to the family business. Instead of roots reggae, Damian is a hybrid of old and new Jamaica, all the soul of his father’s music married to the sound of the street, of the dancehall, of the club. He has the lineage of the legend, but the Tommy gun delivery of Shabba Ranks; the rebel spirit of Bob, but the swagger of Snoop. Thanks in large part to the guidance and production of older brother Stephen, everything coalesced perfectly on Welcome to Jamrock, all of which makes a collaborative album a curious follow-up, and something of a bold, free-spirited statement for Damian.

Among the diverse fans enchanted by Jamrock was Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, who invited Marley to take part in sessions he was doing with Joss Stone, Mick Jagger and Slumdog Millionaire composer A.R. Rohman at Hollywood’s Henson studios, a space long occupied by A&M Records and the original home of Charlie Chaplain Studios. It was at Henson where work on Distant Relatives also began. Damian essentially had the place on lockdown, working in one room with Stone, Jagger, Rohman and Stewart during the day and switching to another at night, when Nas arrived. “I was just amazed,” says the latter. “Damian’s energy for work is bananas. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that kind of energy to create.”

Although Damian’s contributions to the Stewart supergroup have yet to see daylight (Stone is one of the many guests on Distant Relatives along with Lil Wayne, Jr. Reid and K’Naan), the experience informed his work with Nas. It inspired the duo to largely steer clear of the programmed drums and beats they might normally favor. “They were using a lot of live instruments,” says Damian, “and we kind of carried the same live energy over into our room hours later—we kept everything live.”

If his brother Stephen stewarded much of Jamrock, Damian took the production helm with Distant Relatives by leading his band. “Some of the tracks were premeditated ideas that I had, and some were on-the-spot new jams,” he says. “I would ask Nas, ‘Is this one cool for ya?’ or, ‘Is this a little too reggae sounding or too dancehall sounding?’ to which he would tell me, ‘No, I’m good with it.’ Whichever ones I would see him react to were the ones that we would go with. He would nod, or he would say to me, ‘This is fire!’ or he would pop out a pen and paper immediately.”

Work began on Distant Relatives as both Marley and Nas were still getting to know one another. The two met by chance in 1996 at a stop on the Smokin’ Grooves tour featuring Nas and Marley’s older brothers and sisters the Melody Makers. At the time, Nas had a No. 1 album with It Was Written, featuring his immortal duet with Lauryn Hill, “If I Ruled the World,” and Damian was about to release his debut, Mr. Marley.

Their first collaboration began nearly a decade later with a cold call from Damian, who asked Nas to add a verse to what would become one of the sterling moments of Welcome to Jamrock, the prayer-like “Road to Zion.” Nas obliged, flying to Miami and tracking in the Marley family’s home studio. “They’re talking about you in New York,” Marley remembers Nas saying before he left, referring to the fact that title track from Welcome to Jamrock —released well in advance of the actual album—was burning up the hip-hop airwaves in the Big Apple. As Nas remembers it, Damian wasn’t even aware: “I couldn’t believe he didn’t know,” he says, laughing. “I was so shocked—he was so humble about it. I’m sure he knew it was playing, but it definitely was a surprise when I told him how much.” The next year, Marley returned the favor on a yet-to-be-released outtake from Nas’ 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead (it’s unclear whether that recording will ever be heard—“I can’t find the track,” says Nas).