The Mount Rushmore of Reggae & Dancehall

However you feel about the real Mount Rushmore (a 60-foot monument to white patriarchy blasted into the Black Hills of South Dakota with TNT), it has irreversibly entered the language as a metaphor for the ultimate shortlist of greatness; the Wall of Fame, the TEDTalk, the Grey Poupon… like an Olympic medal podium, but with four equal places of G.O.A.T. status. Still, reggae music’s long legacy of resistance to colonialism and white supremacy makes ‘The Mount Rushmore of Reggae’ feel like an uneasy fit at first glance. The genre’s lyricists are much more likely to chant fire on imperial monuments of Rome and Babylon than heap praise.

But… when you check it out, the Jamaican partiality for both famous mountains and braggadocio has given us a sound system named Killamanjaro and an artist named Matterhorn. Throw in reggae’s long-established obsession with Hollywood Westerns and the Rushmore of Reggae starts to make some kind of hyperbolic sense. After all, in the reggae business, you never needed to promote Western expansion or have seen an actual buffalo to call yourself Lone Ranger, Josey Wales or John Wayne on the mic. It's a metaphor – and it still works (even if we know that if any cowboys tried to blast Bob Marley’s face into a sacred mountain, Super Cat The Wild Apache would be more likely to lead a raiding party to halt the destruction of the landscape than he would be to accept his place alongside other reggae greats).

So who has earned their spot on the metaphorical mountaintop? Jamaica’s music industry has been recognized by the UN as the most prolific producer of sound recordings in the world, so whether you start counting with Toots & Maytal’s first use of the term on 1968’s “Do The Reggay” or Jamaica’s Independence back in 1962 or from creation, the “little island with the big sound” has produced far too many talents to reduce its incredible impact to just four names.

But… dedicating different sides of our mountain range to roots reggae and dancehall makes the impossible possible. Behold: The Mount Rushmore of Reggae & Dancehall.

The Mount Rushmore of Reggae

Bob Marley 

Often called the King of Reggae and the Third World’s first international superstar, Bob Marley’s presence here hardly needs introduction or justification. Marley took reggae worldwide and in the process he literally presided over the end of empire, performing live as the Union Jack was lowered in the last British colony in Africa — and the flag of newly-independent Zimbabwe raised in its place. A defining figure of the 20th century on par with Mahatma Gandhi and Che Guevara, he may, if anything, be a little too iconic for some reggae fans. His global appeal is so great that sometimes it's easy to forget that Marley didn’t just popularize reggae — along with his collaborators (including fellow Wailers Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh and their bassist/bandleader Aston “Familyman” Barrett) — he invented the sound in the first place.

U-Roy

So foundational to Jamaican sound system culture that he is almost never mentioned without the honorific Daddy U-Roy, the man born Ewart Beckford is the uncontested pioneer of deejay-style reggae. The first deejay whose toasts were more popular than the songs he chatted over, U-Roy famously scored simultaneous No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 hits on the Jamaican Top 10 in 1970. The first to release a full-length LP with his name on the cover, he must be recognized as a forefather of rap as well.

King Tubby

The sound system U-Roy practiced his skill with toasting on was none other than King Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi. This alone would secure Osbourne Ruddock’s place in music history, but it's a footnote to his main contribution. Despite Diddy’s claim, King Tubby actually invented the remix, pioneering an art form wherein master tapes of the sessions he engineered would be mixed down “live” with reverb added and vocals dubbed in and out to let the thunderous drum and bass of reggae’s rhythm section speak. In other words, he almost single-handedly created the mixing board jazz known as dub. Music — from disco to hip-hop to house to yes, drum and bass — was never the same.

Lee “Scratch” Perry 

Alongside The Wailers, their producer on the seminal Soul Revolution album must be credited with laying reggae’s foundation. While Toots’ song coined the term, Scratch debuted the sound and the ragged, bouncing skank of his own 1968 tune “People Funny Boy” is widely regarded as the first reggae song ever. He was also among the first to release a dub album engineered by Tubby and an early champion of deejays like Prince Jazzbo. Taken all together, Scratch had some hand in the accomplishments of all the other faces on the mountain.

The Mount Rushmore of Dancehall

Yellowman

Also known as King Yellow, Yellowman is the first king of dancehall, a very real if unofficial title that has only been held by five DJs: Yellow, Shabba Ranks, Buju Banton, Beenie Man and Vybz Kartel. Mount Rushmore is not simply a list of kings; it skews foundational. After all, Sean Paul is arguably the top-selling dancehall artist of all time, but he could never have done it if Yellowman hadn’t paved the way.

Super Cat 

Super Cat changed music when he fused dancehall and hip-hop through his collabs with Salaam Remi, Heavy D and Kris Kross, but to be honest, he doesn’t make the mountaintop for those accomplishments alone. Nor is it because he was Kingston’s most-feared soundclash artist long before he ever signed a major label deal. He makes the mountain because during the precise period when he was moving from sound system star to MTV star, he developed a fast, lyrically complex and constantly modulating flow that became the benchmark for the next generation of DJs, including Little Lenny, Risto Benji and a young Buju Banton. When we talk about the golden era of dancehall, Super Cat made the mold that gold was poured into.

Shabba Ranks

Shabba Ranks is here because of his crossover, but not solely because of it. Don’t get it wrong: he was already King of Dancehall before Sony Records took a chance on signing him, but more crucially, he remained dominant in the culture even while he took dancehall truly global. His run from 1987’s “Needle Eye Pum Pum” to 1992’s “Ting-A-Ling” helped define not only several eras of dancehall but a few genres as well. It’s a run that may never have been topped.

Vybz Kartel

Vybz Kartel’s run from ~2002 to well, the present, has been so unstoppable that even the jailhouse couldn’t hold it. In 2016, after nearly 15 years dominating the culture, he scored one of dancehall’s biggest tunes ever in “Fever” while incarcerated for murder. In 2024, his conviction was overturned after a dozen years behind bars. And judging by his two nights of sold-out shows at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in 2025, it's arguable that Kartel is dancehall’s Final Boss, yet to be dethroned nearly a quarter century after he came in the game.

Honorebel mentions: Buju Banton, Beenie Man, Bounty Killer, Ninjaman, Cutty Ranks, Brigadier Jerry, Sister Nancy, Lady Saw, Sean Paul.