Ska and rocksteady set the tempo on “Be Who You Are”, a faster footing than the roots rhythms Macka B ordinarily records over, and he toasts across it in the measured address that has defined his delivery since the early 1980s. The single was released on 21 August, composed and produced by the Hamburg musician Paul Lupa, who plays keyboards and bass and surrounds them with a live rhythm section: Big Finga on drums, Robert “Dubwise” Browne on guitar, Tribuman on horns. The horns carry the melodic line, the guitar marks the offbeat, and the vocal sits forward in the mix, with the phrasing of a lyric Macka B wrote himself, vocal melody included. What he tells the listener is to be who they are.

Advice has been his line of work for forty years. He has been called “the Teacher” since the 1980s for songs about what to eat, how to look after yourself and how to treat other people, and the Wha Me Eat Wednesdays vegan raps he began posting in 2017 carried that voice far beyond the reggae circuit. Lupa has been building his Hamburg catalogue around Jamaican and German vocalists since 2022, and Macka B is the most established voice to record over one of his rhythms so far.

Stream “Be Who You Are” HERE