Old Soul is also in remembrance of Marley’s late son Jo Mersa, who died in December 2022 at the age of 31. I need to try to present some of this music to a new generation.’” Just the song itself and the words and the meaning of it, everything struck me like ‘I need to sing this. “When I heard the song, I didn’t know this song, but it reminded me of those days, and it reminded me of my father and reminded me of Joe. “Joe Higgs was a mentor to so many of us, my father being one,” says Marley, who pulled the song from Higgs 1975 debut album Life of Contradiction. Ziggy enters later on for the heartfelt “There’s A Reward” an homage to late Jamaican musician Joe Higgs, who mentored their father, along with Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, and Bunny Wailer, among many others as they were coming up in Trenchtown. Sweeping through love, and loss, more familial connections also flourish on Old Soul with Damian joining Stephen on the affecting “Cast The First Stone,” singing You and me come last cause we disagree on the recent past / The glass gets shattered, and splinters scattered and somebody child is lost / Doesn’t matter what the windows cost, everybody still bear loss. He adds “This pandemic, my parents have never been through nothing like this in this lifetime, so it was a very strange time.” I called my brother Damian and I told him ‘I picked up the guitar a couple of times, and nothing came about’ and he said to me ‘The same thing happened to me.’ He said ‘It’s as if we can’t speak and listen at the same time,’ and by then, we were definitely observing what was going on in the world.” “All of us were going through that uncertainty, so that was a part of it. “I remember in the pandemic, in the thick of it, going into my home studio, picking up the guitar, and nothing,” shares Marley. This is my life.”Īffectionately referencing his father as Nesta and past spirits like ex-Wailer Peter Tosh on the title track- I knew every Nesta Marley line / You knew that Peter Tosh was fly / In diamond socks and corduroy-“Old Soul” carries the energy through the entire album and all its spirits. I was honored and lucky enough for him to consider me. “I had to really make it read about my life and search for it. “I had to make it about me, from ’72 and my mom’s name and changing the year to ’91, the year after I graduated,” says Marley. It was 1972, my mom and poppa brought me through / Back then they said I was their favorite/ So they say … Fast forward to 1981 / My dad moved on and so did I / Inside, I kept his songs alive / So they say sings Marley through the nostalgic ballad. Initially written by Jamaican artist Omi, Marley immediately connected to the vibe of “Old Soul,” then reworked the lyrics, names, and dates to complement his life.

Old vibe songs