Anthony B Expands His Roots-Reggae World on World of Love

Nearly three decades into a career built on fiery cultural commentary, Rastafari consciousness and an unmistakably commanding delivery, Anthony B is still finding ways to make roots reggae feel expansive. On his new album, World of Love, the veteran Jamaican artist does not attempt to reinvent himself for a younger streaming audience. Instead, he widens the musical world around him.

Released September 4 through Ineffable Records, World of Love is a 16-track project that brings Anthony B together with an international cast including Germany’s Gentleman, Trinidad and Tobago’s Queen Omega, Jamaica’s Shuga, Fia and French-Malian reggae artist Mo’Kalamity. The result is an album that feels distinctly Jamaican at its center while reflecting just how international roots reggae has become.

That distinction matters. Reggae has been global for decades, but World of Love does not approach international collaboration as a novelty. Anthony B sounds completely at home alongside artists whose careers were shaped in different corners of the reggae world. Rather than diluting the music to make it internationally accessible, the album demonstrates that the language of roots reggae already crosses borders.

The opening title track, “World of Love,” featuring Gentleman, establishes that philosophy immediately. Pairing Anthony B with one of European reggae’s most recognizable voices makes sense beyond name recognition. Both artists have spent decades carrying reggae into international spaces, and their presence together reinforces the album’s central idea: love as something larger than romance—a principle capable of connecting communities, cultures and generations.

But Anthony B wisely avoids making World of Love sixteen variations on one message.

The album moves through cultural commentary, spirituality, relationships, celebration and personal affirmation. Songs including “Rude Bwoy,” “Good Music,” “Mamma,” “Jet Ski,” “Bring Me Joy,” “Wake Up,” “Move U Body,” “Winner” and the closing “Oh Jah” reveal a record deliberately built to show different sides of its creator.

That range is one of the album’s greatest strengths.

Anthony B has always been most closely associated with militant roots reggae—the raised voice, the moral urgency, the willingness to confront injustice and demand accountability. That fire has not disappeared. But World of Love allows considerably more warmth into the room.

“Made From Love,” featuring Queen Omega, is an especially fitting collaboration. Queen Omega brings her own formidable roots-reggae identity to a record already grounded in cultural purpose. Their pairing feels less like the standard guest-feature formula and more like two established Caribbean voices meeting on common ground.

It also helps broaden the album geographically. Anthony B represents Jamaica, while Queen Omega brings the powerful reggae tradition that has developed in Trinidad and Tobago. Gentleman represents reggae’s deep European audience and creative ecosystem, while Mo’Kalamity further illustrates the music’s reach beyond the Caribbean.

“Little Cottage,” Anthony B’s collaboration with Mo’Kalamity, is another example of the record’s cross-border character; the song had already received a music-video release earlier in 2026. Rather than presenting international reggae artists as outsiders visiting Jamaican music, World of Love treats them as members of the same musical conversation.

That may ultimately be the album’s most interesting achievement.

Roots reggae has occasionally struggled with the perception that preserving tradition requires preserving a particular moment in time. Anthony B challenges that assumption here. The roots remain recognizable, but the presentation does not feel trapped in the 1990s—the era in which artists such as Anthony B, Sizzla, Capleton and Luciano helped usher conscious reggae into another major period of cultural influence.

Instead, World of Love argues that tradition can travel.

The romantic and lighter material also gives the album breathing room. “Bring Me Joy,” “Lonely” with Shuga, “Bubbling” and “Move U Body” help prevent the project from becoming overly solemn. That balance is important because Anthony B has never existed exclusively as a protest singer. Reggae itself has never been only protest music. Love songs, dance records, spirituality, social commentary and everyday storytelling have always occupied the same ecosystem.

There are moments when the album’s 16-track length works against its immediacy. With so many ideas and moods competing for attention, World of Love can feel more like a broad survey of Anthony B’s musical universe than a tightly constructed concept album. A shorter sequence might have made its strongest thematic moments hit even harder.

Yet the breadth also appears intentional. The title is World of Love, after all, and Anthony B seems interested in constructing exactly that—a musical world large enough to accommodate the revolutionary, the romantic, the spiritual believer and the entertainer.

“Wake Up” brings the record back toward the socially conscious territory audiences expect from Anthony B, while “Winner” shifts the message toward personal empowerment. The latter has been pushed as part of the album’s current rollout, with Anthony B framing its message around positivity, confidence and a winning mentality.

Then comes “Oh Jah.”

Placing a song with that title at the end of the album feels appropriate for an artist whose music has long been inseparable from Rastafari spirituality. After traveling through love, cities, relationships, celebration, loneliness, motherhood and self-belief, Anthony B closes by returning to a spiritual foundation.

It gives the album something resembling a full circle.

And that may be why World of Love works best when viewed not simply as another Anthony B release, but as a statement about longevity.

Veteran reggae artists face a difficult creative problem. Change too dramatically and audiences accuse them of abandoning their identity. Refuse to change and they risk becoming heritage performers repeating the sounds that established them decades earlier.

Anthony B largely avoids both traps.

He sounds like Anthony B.

That might seem like faint praise, but after decades in reggae it is actually one of the album’s strengths. The conviction remains. The distinctive vocal attack remains. The cultural consciousness remains. What has changed is the environment around those qualities.

World of Love places them inside a broader, increasingly interconnected reggae landscape.

The album arrives with 16 tracks and a running time of roughly 56 minutes, released under Anthony B with an exclusive license to Ineffable Records. Its guest list alone stretches across multiple territories, but the record never feels as though collaboration has been used simply to manufacture international appeal.

Instead, the guests reinforce something reggae has demonstrated repeatedly: Jamaica may be the music’s birthplace, but reggae no longer belongs to one geographic space.

Anthony B understands that perhaps better than most. His career has taken Jamaican roots music to audiences around the world, and World of Love sounds like an artist acknowledging the community that grew around that journey.

There is consciousness here. There is romance. There is spirituality. There is movement and celebration. And underneath all of it is the familiar voice of an artist who still believes reggae should communicate something.

At a point in his career when Anthony B could comfortably survive on his catalogue, World of Love finds him continuing the conversation instead.

CEM Rating: 8.5/10

World of Love is not Anthony B abandoning the roots-reggae tradition that made him. It is Anthony B demonstrating how large that tradition has become.

By Dante Jackson, Entertainment Editor