In this age of cultural appropriation, two-time Grammy-nominated reggae artiste J Boog defends his decision to embrace Jamaican music.

He noted that the themes and experiences at the heart of reggae are universal, and mirror his existence.

“Who doesn’t love reggae?… Everybody loves reggae!” he exclaimed.

“It was a music that was easy for us to grasp. It spoke about a lot of love, it spoke about a lot of getting out of crazy situations. Island life in the South Pacific — Hawaii and Samoa — is not all what it seems to be; there is a whole lot of poverty that we have to deal with, and in California as well, it’s the same thing we see,” J Boog explained. “It was one of the genres of music that was talking about that. In the early days we did not understand what the artistes were saying, but once we started to grow up, love the music and listen to it… dissect each word, you got to learn more of the music and appreciate what they were talking about. And they were talking about the same situations that we were going through. And we never looked back. It took us out of a lot of crazy situations and we love it and appreciate it to this day — it’s that powerful.”

Born Jerry Afemata in California, J Boog is of Samoan descent and based in Hawaii. He was introduced to reggae by his siblings, and Bob Marley was one of his early influences. His love for the music grew and last weekend, he lived out one of his lifelong fantasies — to perform in Jamaica.

“Didn’t think it was going to happen, didn’t know I would be able to come down here and perform at (Reggae) Sumfest, and we’re just thankful for the opportunity. It’s been a couple years since we’ve been doing music, and we’ve always wanted to come down here to Jamaica and show our side of the story, I guess, from the South Pacific and we’re loving every second that we are in MoBay. Just being backstage and seeing the tents with all the artistes, some of them are our good friends and we’re just having a blast,” he told the Jamaica Observer following his maiden performance last Friday night.

No stranger to Jamaica, J Boog has worked with an impressive list from the local music industry. His back-to-back Grammy-nominated projects — Rose Petals in 2017 and Wash House Ting this year — are replete with contributions from reggae’s finest.

“It’s a long list. I worked with Jukeboxx Productions, Shane Brown, Tarrus Riley, Morgan Heritage, Keznamdi, I-Octane… we were just on tour with him couple months ago. We were just on tour with Jesse Royal and Etana; there is just so many of them that we know and love and appreciate our relationship with them. Right now we are not on the road. We’re taking a break from touring and just starting to put material together for a new album which we could drop late next year or early 2020,” said the burly J Boog. “So we are just compiling some music and taking the time off to record with some producers and get a feel for it. This past two years we were nominated for the Grammys, and it was an honour to be in the calibre of those type of artistes, some of whom we know, which is amazing. We never thought that would be possible and we are just loving it.”