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Cali Roots Riddim produced by Collie Buddz out in May 2020

03/25/2020 by Press Release

The California Roots Music & Arts Festival has moved their dates for this year’s event to October 9-11, 2020 at the Monterey County Fair and Event Center. The lineup will remain 100% intact and will feature the biggest names in reggae, hip hop, and roots music.

Cali Roots has partnered with Ineffable Records to release 21 never heard before tracks from artists from the Cali Roots scene. Starting this Friday, March 27 with Collie Buddz’ Hold Firm, a new song from the project will drop on all digital music platforms with the full project coming out on May 22, the original kick off date for Cali Roots 2020. California Roots Festival and Ineffable Records are both part of the Ineffable Music Group umbrella.

“As we continue to deal with these unprecedented circumstances, we want to thank our community for being so patient. We hope that the release of ‘Cali Roots Riddim 2020’ will keep fans quenched with new music as we all wait a bit longer to enjoy our annual weekend together. The project is exciting, as we are the first North-American festival to launch its own Riddim.” says Cali Roots co-producer and Ineffable partner Dan Sheehan.

The Cali Roots Riddim project is a 21 track compilation of never heard before songs from top artists from the Cali Roots scene—highlighting top reggae acts from the US, as well as incorporating Jamaican acts and acts from around the world. Riddim compilations have been a part of Jamaican and reggae music culture for decades, but have not been made from the US reggae scene in the past. A riddim is an instrumental that is sent to a number of artists, each recording vocals and creating a unique song over the same exact instrumental. In this case, legendary Bermudian reggae star Collie Buddz produced the Cali Roots Riddim, as well as did a version of the riddim with his vocals. Top acts from the thriving American reggae scene like SOJA, Pepper, Common Kings, and The Movement have joined Jamaican stars like Jesse Royal and Anthony B, as well as other international acts like France’s Dub Inc and Germany’s Gentleman for this release, each with their own unique song over the same beat.

Once each artist recorded their vocals over the Buddz-produced beat, Johnny Cosmic, who in recent years has become arguably the top producer in the American reggae scene, took each track and added additional production and mixing so that each track had its own unique sound despite being over the same instrumental. Cosmic is the guitar player in the Stick Figure live band and associate produced Stick Figure’s World on Fire album, which was the #1 best selling Billboard reggae album of 2019. Cosmic also produced the Movement’s Ways of the World (#5 on Billboard’s 2019 list) and is featured on/produced a few tracks on Collie Buddz’s Hybrid (#6 on Billboard’s 2019 list).

Beginning March 27, a single from the project will be released each Friday leading up to the full 21 track compilation’s release. The version with Collie Buddz’s vocals, Hold Firm will drop on March 27th, The Movement’s track Alien will drop on April 3, and Anthony B’s track Chill Out will drop April 10.

Ineffable Music’s Head of Label Services and Cali Roots Riddim executive producer Adam Gross adds, “We’ve been working on this project for a while now and it has honestly been one of the most fun projects I’ve worked on in my professional life. In my opinion, Collie is one of the best producers around, and when we launched the project we didn’t expect to get over 20 tracks back, but the artists found Collie’s beat to be so easy to write over. Collie is so well respected that most artists were excited to collaborate with him. It’s amazing how different each song is despite being the same instrumental."

He adds, “We’re living in a time that has decimated the music industry amongst many other industries. A lot of our business revolves around the live side, so right now we need to be creative. While we started this project before the crisis hit, we believe projects like these are what the industry needs to focus on for the time being. 21 acts all around the world banding together to promote each other’s music is really a beautiful thing, and we need to do all we can to unify and lift all boats and help each other out right now. This virus can take away a lot of things, but it cannot take away our ability to stream music to support independent artists."