Many angles to marijuana music

Trying to identify the best marijuana songs in Jamaican popular music is about as easy as picking out the best individual stalks of cane on an expansive sugar estate close to reaping time. However, there are multiple angles to songs on the illegal substance.

Among them are:

1 Gimme De Weed (Jigsy King): A rasping straight-out ode to marijuana use done in the early 1990s on the same rhythm as Buju Banton's Good God of My Salvation. Jigsy King squeezes in a plea for its preservation as he deejays, "gimme de weed, good ganja weed, no bodda burn it down cause oonu we murder de breed". He underscores the lengths he will go to to access marijuana: "Well, I will walk through the valley, I will run through the storm, no stop the move along til me reach the woodland, go check Niyahbinghi the true Rastaman, just to get a draw."

2 It Haffi Bun (Josey Wales): An early 1980s song of outright defiance of the law and those responsible for upholding it. The Colonel chants: "In front a station ganja pipe a bun/smoke from the chalice make the Babylon eye run/get vex go in go clean up him machine gun/come in de dance waan come run dreadlocks dung/it haffi bun/Jah know it haffi bun."

3 Kaya (Bob Marley): The title track from the 1978 album, Kaya, presents the ideal situation for smoking marijuana. Marley sings: "Wake up and turn I loose/for the rain is falling/got to have Kaya now/got to have Kaya now/got to have Kaya now/because the rain is falling/I feel so high, I even touch the sky/above the falling rain."

4 Tired Fe Lick Weed a Bush (Jacob Miller): In the mid-1970s, Jacob 'Killer' Miller sings about the marijuana smoker's perennial woe - having to hide his or her habit from the law - with "tired fe lick weed inna bush/tired fe lick pipe inna gully/we want to come out in the open/where the breeze can blow it so far away/to the north, to the south ..."

5 Legalise It (Peter Tosh): The Stepping Razor's title track on his solo debut album in 1976. Advocating a change in the law, Tosh sings "legalise it and I will advertise it".

6 Buckingham Palace (Peter Tosh): A foot stomper of a disco song from the Mystic Man album, Tosh takes marijuana into symbolic sources of power overseas: "Light yu spliff/light yu chalice/make we smoke it in Buckingham Palace/lend me a paper, lend me a fire/make we chase way all dem vampire." For good measure, he goes across to the United States, singing "put on yu vest yes/and call the press yes/we gonna smoke it in the House of Congress".

7 Herbman Hustling (Sugar Minott): In an unabashed businesslike approach to marijuana, Minott sings about the travails of the marijuana trader: "Herbman this a herbman hustling/I know it's my neck I'm risking ... but you see that's my daily living."

8 Kushumpeng (Frankie Paul): There are many names for marijuana, but in the mid-1980s Frankie Paul made a fresh one popular as he requested "pass the kushumpeng/pass it over!"

- MC