This is one we’ve been working on a while at Easy Star, in close step with Runkus and his team, as well as with Tavares Strachan’s Isolated Media. We couldn’t be more excited to share this full album with all of you and hope that you hear in it the hype we are hearing from around the industry. If you feel it, say something, spread the word far and wide around this “masterpiece” (according to John Masouri and Echoes Magazine).
A unique voice in modern reggae, Runkus has established an avant-garde reputation, fearlessly breaking down borders, weaving together both modern and ancient into one sound. He’s worked as an artist, producer, songwriter, and scorer for the past decade, winning a MOBO (for his work on Bashy’s Being Poor Is Expensive), as well as being nominated for GRAMMY, Juno, and Ivor Novello Awards along the way.
Recently, Runkus felt a deeper calling towards the world of visual art, which has lead to working with Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan, whose multi-disciplinary output has earned him a MacArthur Genius Prize. With the new album, SUPERNOVA, which includes guest appearances by Sean Paul and Peter Tosh, they have reignited a seamless collaboration of music and art, following in the footsteps of pairings like The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, Kanye West and Virgil Abloh, and (closer to Runkus’s home country of Jamaica) Bob Marley and Neville Garrick. Roots reggae, thumping bass, dancehall energy, and deep lyricism merge together to tell a story of life and death, the sheep and the wolf, the version of you that has to die for the next one to be born, all elements of SUPERNOVA.
