Growing up in the Chicago area with Jamaican heritage running deep, Kazayah came to roots reggae as a calling. Her latest single “Mustard Seed” pairs her with Tikur Anbessa Records, the Los Angeles label run by Fikir Amlak, a singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer with 20 years in the business, and London’s King Alpha, a Ghanaian-born, West London producer and sound system operator who has spent years pressing dub and roots riddims to vinyl and taking them to sound system stages across Europe and beyond. Amlak and King Alpha have worked together since 2014, giving the record a production backbone with a decade of roots credibility behind it.

The track rides a heavy steppas riddim, deep bassline and crisp percussion giving her warm, focused delivery the room to push the message forward. In both biblical and Rastafari tradition the mustard seed is faith that grows from almost nothing, and for an artist who found Rastafari as a reckoning with Black identity and cultural pride, that image runs through everything she makes, placing her in the line of Marcia Griffiths and Jah9.

Stream “Mustard Seed” HERE