‘Family is everything’ for Junior Reid

Legendary reggae singer Junior Reid is a man who strongly endorses the concept of family.

His outfit is known as the One Blood Family, named in honour of his mega 1989 hit, One Blood. In a recent interview, he told THE STAR that "everything starts and ends with the family" and stressed that the breakdown of family values is one reason why this world is in the state it is in.

"This world is nothing without the family. If you have certain things and you can't enjoy it with your family, then it's not even worth having," the Foreign Mind singer said.

He took time to explain his concept of family.

"And yuh family don't mean just your kids alone. How the system set, dem seh family is your yutes and yuh spouse, but family is really more than that. A lot of fatherless yutes out there and dem look up to me and seh 'Fada Reid' ... and it mean that dem see something in me as father figure and me can give dem guidance and protection. Cause yuh can't just help your yutes ... yuh haffi help others," he opined.

Within his own family unit, his JR Productions, which has produced artistes from Big Youth to Gregory Isaacs to Dennis Brown, is working on a project with his sons and daughter, which will be titled One Blood Family. The original idea was for a Junior Reid and Sons album, but he ditched that because he "couldn't leave out [his] daughter] ... she is important".

Junior Reid was one of the artistes who passed through Beenie Man's album launch on Monday night at Di Lot on Constant Spring Road when THE STAR caught up with him.

"Beenie Man is from Waterhouse where we come from and not only that ... he is an international reggae artiste who put in the work, so mi decide to come and give him the support," he said, adding that he was on his way to Ocho Rios for his own video release party.

Reid has done some work with an overseas rapper named Rudy Rough and their collaboration, titled Exodus, is accompanied by a music video.

Although he didn't stay long at the launch of Beenie Man's Simma, he pointed out that the event was a good look and shared that he has been staging a weekly event at his base every Friday because it was important "to keep live music alive".

"We have a ting name Friday Night Live in the City. We used to have band every Friday night, but sometimes we need time to promote the band show in the real way, so we decide to keep the band show on the month end and have tracks performances first to third Fridays. Ricky Trooper is in the house on the third Friday as a guest selector with Chyna Doll and then we have other guest selectors or sound systems. And we also have our own One Blood International," Reid said.

Among the artistes who will be performing on Friday are Anthony Cruz, Fred Locks, Tony Tuff, Prince Allah and several up-and-coming acts..