Tony Roots, Jah Warrior

Tony Roots was introduced to me by Barry Issac in 1998. I used to hire Conscious Sounds every Thursday at that time and Barry was there every Wednesday. I’d known Barry for years through music runnings as we used to help each other by selling each others tunes to people we knew. In the course of our activities Barry would sometimes call in during one of my recording sessions or I’d check him during one of his. I knew about Tony Roots though at that time he was just starting to make a name for himself, working with Barry and also Roots Hitek who was just starting off in production then. Barry had released a single with him called Hola Zion which a lot of sounds were playing plus a showcase album called Not Far Away, both for Reggae On Top label. Barry told me that Tony wanted to link with me and do some works, and I was open to the idea so we met up one day and had a talk. Tony is originally from Jamaica but he had a good understanding of what we were doing in London, and I liked his voice. I gave him a few riddims to take away and see which ones he felt he could work with.