It’s the first single taken from the album and the best to showcase the strength of what the guys are about to undertake. Opening number As We Enter is the obvious emphatic biggie on this record. These factors make it topically and musically more assessable to a global audience and the numbers making up Distant Relatives are individually evident of that. The album has both heavy African influences as well as taking inspiration from the streets of Jamaica and mainstream America for that high profile commercial sound. Lyrically the record touches on topics you would expect from an album merging mainstream rap and reggae – friendship and family, race, politics, war and unity.
With the strong backgrounds of both artists brought together the album is very culturally and globally promoted as well as strong. Usually it’s for a one-off track with a ‘featuring’ connection to the title, but when U.S rapper Nas and Jamaican reggae star Damian Marley decided to do just that, the result – Distant Relatives – is the offspring and a musical bridging of a continental gap between harmonious Jamaican calm, African/Caribbean soul and gangster battle rhyme. It’s not that often that a giant of rap and a reggae legend get together to collaborate on a shared headline album.
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