International Reggae group Bonafide is looking to breathe new life into their 2012 collaboration with Grammy-winning artiste Damian ‘Jr Gong’ Marley, Start and Stop, by finally releasing the music video for the track. In an interview with The Gleaner, the group’s leader Junior Roots expressed that although the accompanying visuals come some eight years after the song’s initial release, the message could not be more relevant today.
“This song was birthed from a meet up with Damian Marley eight years ago. We wanted it to be a love song, a song about on-again, off-again relationships, but Damian said it would resonate more if it was about life in general, how people start one thing and then stop because life gets in the way. Listening to that track again recently and looking at everything that’s going on in the world right now, it is even more relevant today,” he said. “The world really is in a ‘start and stop’ mode. There are so many things that we started at the beginning of the year that we have had to stop, and so everyone can relate to it. Right now was just the perfect time to release the music video.”
Describing Jr Gong as a master of his craft, Junior Roots revealed that looking back on how the track came to fruition, he believes that not only is the Marley offspring a musical genius, but he believes the entertainer has a musical third eye, one that makes him almost prophetic. “The way he helped to put the message for this song together was almost like he was seeing into the future. The ideas he had, the way he expressed it, he must be a prophet or something, because I didn’t know then that this song would be so relevant today. Right now, in everything, this song just fits in perfectly.”
The video, which was released over the weekend, is currently only available for streaming on music website reggaeville, but Junior Roots says that will change when the group gets the green light to upload it to all digital music platforms in two weeks. Although he’s hoping the video will spark new interest in the song, the band leader said the most important goal at this juncture is to get people to hear the message behind the track. He says people need to know the importance of starting again once they’ve stopped, especially in these COVID times when most things have been put on pause. “There’s a start and a stop in everything you do in life, but we want people to know that it’s OK to start again once you stop. Even if you don’t feel like you can start again, brush yourself off and get going again. That’s the only way you’re going to finish. We want to encourage people to finish. If you stop, start again and finish.”