When Words & Music sits down to talk with emerging reggae singer-songwriter and SOCAN member King Cruff (born Solomon Marley-Spence), it’s a few days after the 26-year-old artist’s Toronto headlining debut at the Drake Underground, where he crushes it with mad skills and high energy.
Select the image to access the YouTube video of the King Cruff song “Jack’s Hill Dreamers” (featuring Skip Marley)
King Cruff has spent the past few years on stages in Canada, the U.S., and Jamaica, for cultural events like the Tuff Gong Takeover in New York; Toronto’s Caribana; School Night; touring with DillanPonders; and at both the L.A. and Toronto opening nights of the Bob Marley One Love Experience. His first performance at Toronto’s History venue was in front of a sold-out crowd, opening for Damian and Stephen Marley on the Traffic Jam Tour. He’s shared Jamaican stages with Buju Banton and Lauryn Hill, and was the Reggae/Afro Beats Artiste of the Year at the 2023/2024 Essence and Culture Awards in London, Ontario, where he lives. His cumulative Spotify listens are well above 300,000; his cumulative YouTube views, more than 1.5 million.
Cruff’s music is state-of-the-art reggae for the current moment, smoothly incorporating dancehall, toasting, electronic, rap, R&B, and expert production – as per his late-2024 debut EP WHAT HAVE I’DON. A gently lilting melody, stuttering beat, and sweet singers make “Shedoeneed” a compelling gem. The production on the banger “Easy!” keeps the sound palette minimal and tight, deftly supporting the vocals. Cruff offers up-from-my-own-bootstraps ambition on “Jack’s Hill Dreamers” (featuring Skip Marley); conscious, minor-key intensity on “Rita’s Revenge”; and gentle romantic invitations on “Toronto Condo Girls.” All of it is infectiously catchy and danceable, and the fact that Cruff happens to be Bob and Rita Marley’s grandson matters not a whit. The record is only six songs in 15 minutes, but it’s a memorable listen.
So, where did King Cruff’s mélange of styles come from? “That’s always kind of been my goal as a musician,” he says. “Not necessarily just in reggae, but music in general. I’ve grown up as someone who loves all these different genres. I love rap, and I love disco, and I love funk, electronic music, rock music… The baseline for all of that, which I grew up on, is obviously reggae music.”
“Jack’s Hill Dreamers” includes a line about Cruff seeing his own face in the Gleaner newspaper in Jamaica. “It has happened, a couple of times, actually,” he says. “That’s what ‘Jack’s Hill Dreamers’ is all about, these moments of being a kid, wanting certain things, and then having them happen. Even the track itself is produced by Illmind and Don Mills; I used to rock over Illmind beats at the dinner table as a kid… The whole thing is just a full circle.”
Among the other producers on WHAT HAVE I’DON is the globally successful, Montréal-based duo of Banx & Ranx, whose co-signing work on “Easy!” is especially engaging. “All thanks goes to Banx & Ranx, because they’re the ones that brought that song together,” says Cruff. “Usually when we connect, we do a lot of pop stuff. That day I went to them and said, ‘Guys, I think we need to switch up the style, we need to do something more aggressive, ‘cause we haven’t tried that yet’… It [our working relationship] started out as one of those internal [record] label connections, but as time went on, we were, like, ‘We actually have great chemistry here,’ so we just continued working together.”
Select the image to access the YouTube video of the King Cruff/Banx & Ranx song “Easy!”
With “Shedoeneed,” Cruff shows respect for independent women – a rare quality in old-school reggae. “We just wanted to make some music that ladies could feel that they own,” he says. “I only grew up around strong women. In the Marley family, the women around us held down a lot of the business side of the family. I grew up looking up to that, so I just have a deep reverence for it.”
Speaking of women in the family, “Rita’s Revenge” is named for his music-making grandmother (wife of Bob Marley) and references the word “harambe” – which is Swahili for “all come together,” and the national motto of Kenya. It’s also the name of an infamous gorilla.
“‘Harambe’ is one of Grandma Rita’s songs,” says Cruff. “That’s actually where the gorilla got its name!” he laughs. And the literal shout-out of “King Street!” [in the song] has similar roots: “That whole chorus is just an interpolation of the song ‘King Street,’ by my Grandma. The whole record, I’m literally just taking lines from my Grandma… There was a moment at the [Drake Underground] show where I realized that people are singing a song where my Grandma wrote these lyrics. I had this sense of pride, like, I’m on this stage now bringing back her lyrics. It’s a good feeling.”