Skindred, Ragga Metal Creator

Most of us first heard about Skindred when we were playing Need for Speed Underground, the first part, this game has the best soundtrack ever, that is just my opinion. There were some pretty catchy songs there, Rob Zombie and Spider Bait did a great job, but there came one of the unknowns with a song called “Nobody”, as they were nobodies at the time, well, for most of us they were. Skindred did publish their first album titled “Babylon” in 2004 and the song “Nobody” featured on the Need for Speed Soundtrack comes from that album, but this is only partially true. Let’s explain a few things about Skindred, the founder of Ragga Metal.

Skindred was formed by Benji Webbe, but the line up for the band was not his first choice and this wasn’t his first time trying out the new sound now called Ragga Metal. He had a band called Dub War, solidly popular band in the UK, but they had some contract issues with the label company and after two full albums they had to disband. After that Benji Webbe tried and tried to get the band together under a new name, but they never really hit it off. In fact, The first “Babylon” album was recorded in 2002 with the old band members but it didn’t work and so they fell apart. But looking back we can say that Dub War created Ragga Metal, but the title of Ragga Metal creator goes to Skindred as they were the ones who made it popular.

The “Babylon” album was released two more times, in 2003 and eventually in 2004. After the NFS soundtrack and some gigs the 2004 release of the “Babylon” album finally took and new sound swept across the world winning thousands of fans of this fast new sound.

Since then Skindred has gained in popularity, their first album, third release, started climbing the charts at an amazing speed, hitting number one on the US Reggae top list and at the moment their single “Nobody” was in every rock, metal, pop, top 10 chart in the world. Soon after they released another video for the song “Pressure”, and after just one album and two videos Skindred was considered as mainstream two years later.

2007 saw the release of their second album, “Roots Rock Riot”. That album was criticized at first, but in a short month after the release it took the number one place in almost any top list in the world. The band was constantly on tours with Korn, Sepultura, Soul Fly and other great Hard Core bands. And last year they finally released their third album, “Shark Bites and Dog Fights”. Starting tomorrow they will be on a new 2 month tour across Europe and late US, their first show is scheduled for tomorrow at the Gurten Festival in Bern and all of the fans can’t wait to hear the Skindred new single live, “You Can’t Stop It”.

Well, this is Skindred, this is Ragga Metal, this is the new music sound that now has millions of followers around the world and new bands are popping up everywhere, all thanks to Benji Webbe and his music vision.