Sizzla
One of the most prolific voices of Jamaica’s 1990s culture-reggae surge: a high cry, sudden growl and Rastafari-centered writing moving between roots riddims and dancehall attack.
Miguel “Sizzla” Collins learned on Caveman Hi-Fi before joining Philip “Fatis” Burrell’s Xterminator circle in the mid-1990s. Praise Ye Jah and Black Woman & Child made his combination of roots-reggae message, dancehall urgency and volatile vocal range central to a wider return of Rastafari-centered “culture” music. Sizzla’s catalog is enormous and uneven by design: roots albums, one-riddim voicings, digital dancehall, love songs and confrontational records coexist. Bobby Digital’s production on Black Woman & Child and later Da Real Thing gave the voice some of its strongest full-album frames. His influence is substantial, while homophobic lyrics and public controversy are also part of the record and should not be scrubbed away by the word “conscious.”