With every album Bob Marley made during the 1970s he attracted different superlatives. In 1999, he got probably the biggest accolade when TIME Magazine named his Exodus ‘Album of The Century’.

That came 18 years after his death at age 36 from cancer. Exodus, an epic that was recorded during his ‘exile’ in London, ranks among the great concept albums. It was released by Island Records on June 3 1977, 40 years ago this month.

Exodus was the follow-up to Rastaman Vibration, released in 1976. In December that year, Marley and his wife Rita were among four individuals shot by gunmen at his Hope Road home in St Andrew.

The incident took place two days before the Smile Jamaica concert at National Heroes’ Park in Kingston called by prime minister Michael Manley to ease political tension in Jamaica.

After performing there, Marley left Jamaica for The Bahamas then England, where angst from the Hope Road attack inspired Exodus.

David Rodigan was a budding 26-year-old British disc jockey in 1977, who describes Exodus as “a greatest hits album on its own”.

He added: “Think about it; Jammin’, Waiting In Vain, Natural Mystic, Guiltiness, The Heathen…it’s a powerful, powerful album that was played like a single.”

Tyrone Downie, who played keyboards and percussion on Exodus, told the Jamaica Observer last year that Marley never had a marketing strategy or concept when he recorded.

“The Wailers wasn’t a regular kinda band, like a commercial band wey do a album an’ go out dey an’ hit di chart, even though Bob waan mek di charts. But him thinking ’bout Jamaica, politics, crime, racism, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, America, racism… every album was ’bout wi life,” Downie explained.

Some of the songs from Exodus were recorded at Harry J studios in Kingston before Marley left for England. Most of the sessions abroad, Downie recalled, took place at Island’s Basin Street studio.

While it contained the rocking Jammin’ and other mainstream cuts like Waiting In Vain and Three Little Birds, the ominous title track and Natural Mystic struck a nerve with black power advocates — and white Britons like Rodigan.

“It was a mega album, a brilliant album, timeless,” said Rodigan before singing the first verse of Guiltiness.

Robert Christgau, the respected music critic for Rolling Stone Magazine, offered this review.

“As with so many black artistes from this country, Marley’s latest lyrics seem a little perfunctory, mixing vague politics of dubious depth with hackneyed romantic sentiments of dubious depth, and so what? Marley is not obliged to devote himself to propaganda. As with so many black artistes from this country, the music is primary here; a message appropriate to his condition is conveyed by the unrushed rhythms and the way the sopranos share equally with the instruments and the new wariness of his phrasing and dynamics. Some of the cuts are flat, but if the O’Jays were to put five or six good ones on an LP ­— including two as striking as Jammin’ and So Much Things To Say — we’d call it solid and enjoyable at least. That’s what this is.”

To mark Exodus’s 40th anniversary, the Marley family, Island Records and UMe (owners of the Island catalogue) will release four reissue albums. One of them is Marley’s son Ziggy’s ‘restatement’ of the original.