The Wailers Trio released "Fig Tree" on October 30, 2026, a new version of a deep cut from Bunny Wailer's 1976 album Blackheart Man. Cen'c Love, Bunny Wailer's daughter, sings alongside Blvk H3ro on the track, and VP Records followed it on November 6 with the full album, Rastaman 50.

Rastaman 50 marks 50 years since three solo records that set the terms for roots reggae: Wailer's Blackheart Man, Peter Tosh's Legalize It, and Bob Marley's Rastaman Vibration, all released in 1976. The album reworks songs from those three records plus earlier material from the group's Upsetter period, when the original Wailers recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry at his Black Ark studio. That is where this site's own dub lineage starts. Perry's work on those sessions sits in the same chain that runs through King Tubby and into the soundsystem culture that later fed jungle and bass music. Rastaman 50 does not try to make that connection itself. It is a roots record, not a crossover one, and it is honest about that.

The detail

"Fig Tree" was recorded in Trench Town and produced by Maxine Stowe, Dave Green, and Jermaine Williams. Stowe has said the single is the opening piece of Rastaman 50, and that the next planned track, "Dreamland," will build on Love and H3ro's work here as part of a wider Blackheart Man 50 anniversary campaign. The current Wailers Trio lineup pairs Blvk H3ro with Dahvid Slur and J Written, with Cen'c Love stepping into the spot held before by Abijah Livingston. VP Records timed the November 6 release to the anniversary period of Emperor Haile Selassie I's 1930 coronation, a date with real weight in Rastafari tradition, and framed the project as carrying the Wailers' message of freedom and self-determination to a new generation.

This is not a bass record, and the site is not pretending otherwise. It belongs here because the lineage it draws on, Bunny Wailer and Lee Perry's Upsetter sessions in early 1970s Jamaica, is the root the rest of this site's story grows out of. A 50-year-old song reworked by the original singer's own daughter, on the label that has carried this catalog for decades, is a bigger event than most of what passes for reggae news in a given week.

Where to go next: watch the official video for "Fig Tree" on VP Records' YouTube channel, and read more about Lee "Scratch" Perry's Upsetter years on his artist page on this site.

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Image: Photo via Jamaica Observer