Bob Marley
The King of Reggae Music, Bob Marley carried reggae from Jamaica to the world and made it the delivery system for something bigger than entertainment. He has sold more than 77 million records worldwide, and Legend, the 1984 compilation, has spent over 950 weeks on the Billboard 200, a run matched by only one album in the chart’s history; it has been the best-selling reggae album in the United States for six consecutive years. In June 1978 the United Nations awarded him its Peace Medal of the Third World for the One Love Peace Concert in Kingston, and in 1980 he played a free concert for nearly 80,000 people at Zimbabwe’s independence ceremony. Rolling Stone ranks him eleventh among the greatest artists of all time, and the One Love Foundation, founded by the Marley family, has donated millions in his name.
Born Robert Nesta Marley in 1945 in Nine Mile, a rural village outside Kingston, he formed The Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in his late teens and moved with them from ska into reggae. The Wailers’ Catch A Fire arrived in April 1973, and 1976’s Rastaman Vibration reached number 8 on the Billboard Top 200. Exodus followed in 1977 and was later named Album of the Century by Time magazine. Kaya came in 1978, Survival in 1979 carried “Zimbabwe” and its call for African unity, and Uprising, released in 1980, was the last album issued in his lifetime.
His songs spoke to colonialism in “Small Axe,” to poverty in “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry),” and to the necessity of political agency in “Get Up, Stand Up” and “Burnin’ and Lootin’.” The music took in more than reggae, drawing on funk, soul, and disco, and Eric Clapton took “I Shot the Sheriff” to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974. “No Woman, No Cry” and “Redemption Song” remain among his best-known recordings, and the BBC designated “One Love” the Song of the Millennium.
Jamaica awarded him the Order of Merit in April 1981, a month before his death on May 11. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001. Catch A Fire entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010.
His family has kept building on the catalog. Legend has sold more than 250,000 copies every year since its release and passed 10 million since SoundScan began counting in 1991. Brooklyn renamed an eight-block stretch of Church Avenue Bob Marley Boulevard in 2006, and the Los Angeles City Council proclaimed August 7 Bob Marley Day in 2012. His story reached the screen in 2024 with Bob Marley: One Love, nominated for Best Movie at the BET Awards, and the companion album won Best Reggae Album at the 67th Grammy Awards. In June 2025 Bob Marley Hope Road opened at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, developed with Cedella Marley, Ziggy Marley, Primary Wave Music, and FiveCurrents, pairing a daytime exhibition built around Trench Town with a 75-minute nightly show.
