Nearly four decades after lending his unmistakable voice to UB40’s golden era, Birmingham reggae pioneer Admiral Jerry is back—not to bask in nostalgia, but to remind Britain that some battles are never truly over.

His new single, Chant Down Babylon, released alongside an evocative music video on Windrush Day, is more than a song. It is a reckoning. A love letter to resilience. A warning that the promises made to one generation must not become broken inheritances for the next.

Premiering on June 22, the annual commemoration of the Windrush Generation, the video arrives at a moment when questions of belonging, identity and racial justice continue to reverberate across Britain.

Directed by Amsterdam-based production house Jah Mission, it forms the centrepiece of The Empire Windrush EP, a project produced by Aldo Dice of Birmingham’s Farda Dice Studios and named after the HMT Empire Windrush, the ship that carried hundreds of Caribbean migrants to Tilbury Docks in 1948 to help rebuild a nation emerging from war.

For Admiral Jerry, however, Windrush is not simply history—it is family history.

Born and raised in Handsworth, Birmingham, one of Britain’s most influential centres of reggae, Rastafari culture and sound system tradition, he grew up surrounded by music that carried both joy and resistance in equal measure.

“Handsworth is central to my very being,” he says. “It’s a militant ghetto rich in Rasta culture and roots music that made me see the world through tribulation and suffering, while instilling in me a deep love for music.”

His storytelling has always drawn from lived experience. As a first-generation Black Briton of Jamaican heritage, Jerry found himself navigating two very different worlds. A gifted student, he moved from grammar school to private education, only to discover that academic success did little to shield him from prejudice.

“I soon realised I didn’t belong and that I wouldn’t be accepted,” he recalls. “I wasn’t the type to just put up and shut up.”

Instead, he chose music.

That decision would eventually place him alongside UB40 during the band’s formative years in the 1980s. The partnership began organically through Birmingham’s legendary Stereo Classic Sound System, where members of UB40 crossed paths with Jerry at local blues parties before inviting him into the studio.

Recording tracks such as Up and Coming MC and Demonstrate in 1985 and touring with the band proved transformative.

“It was a learning experience from beginning to end,” he says. “Something I still cherish to this very day.”

Yet Chant Down Babylon may be his most personal work to date.

Originally written for a Black History event, the song gives voice to a generation confronting economic hardship, social exclusion and dwindling opportunities. Rather than dwelling solely on injustice, it channels reggae’s oldest instinct: resistance through hope.

“I wanted to express the pressures of life in Babylon,” Jerry explains, “especially for the youths of today who don’t feel there’s a future for them.”

That sense of continuity—between the Windrush pioneers who crossed an ocean seeking opportunity and today’s young people searching for one—is what gives the song its emotional weight.

The accompanying video reinforces that message. Shot across Birmingham and London, it lingers at the mural of the late Benjamin Zephaniah in Handsworth Park, unveiled on Windrush Day last Monday.

For Jerry, the title Chant Down Babylon is both a protest and a prayer.

“If this song resonates with you,” he says, “it’s because you’ve experienced oppression or hatred in your own life. If it inspires even one person to continue fighting against the odds, then I give thanks.”

It is a sentiment that feels particularly timely.

As Britain continues to wrestle with the legacy of Windrush and the unfinished business of equality, Admiral Jerry’s return is less a comeback than a continuation of a conversation reggae has been having for decades.

His voice has lost none of its conviction, but only gained the authority of experience.