Dre Island

Beginning in the early 2010s, the smooth-voiced Jamaican pianist and singer merged dancehall with roots reggae, balancing socially conscious messages against more casual reflections on relationships and the music world. After moving among several labels and issuing a string of singles, he achieved wider notice with the 2017 single “We Pray,” a collaboration with fellow Jamaican Popcaan that appeared on his own Kingston Hills imprint. In 2020, under Solid Agency management, he finally issued the long-anticipated debut album Now I Rise, aiming to reach broader international audiences.

Born Andre Johnson and raised by his grandmother in Kingston’s Donmair Close neighborhood, he grew up in modest circumstances. His father nonetheless funded piano lessons from the age of three, and Johnson received his own instrument at eight. While attending Kingston’s Calabar High School he absorbed reggae through recordings by Bob Marley and Dennis Brown. Childhood friend Kirk Thomas encouraged him to pursue music professionally and coined the stage name Dre Island. Johnson progressed from performing at the Emmanuel Gospel Assembly to learning studio operations, eventually establishing himself as a producer and engineer. Studying the approaches of Buju Banton and Stephen Marley, he taught himself beat construction. While engineering sessions for the emerging Chronixx, who was recording a song written by his father Chronicle, the two artists challenged each other to create original material; Dre Island soon began performing his own songs at local events. He kept his musical activities so private that many neighbors first learned of them only when he made his national television debut.

The May 2013 single “Rastafari Way” accumulated substantial video streams and helped build an audience for the October follow-ups “Reggae Love” and “Find Dem Flaw.” When a BBC radio team visited Tuff Gong Studio in January 2014, Johnson recorded an unpolished, spontaneous solo piano version of “Uptown, Downtown.” The broadcast generated enough interest for Dre Island to tour Europe in late 2014 and early 2015 alongside Chronixx and Zinc Fence Redemption. Throughout 2016 he released five separate singles on Jam2, UIM, Maximum Sound, Gacha, and E5. Momentum increased the next summer with “We Pray,” issued on Kingston Hills; the track later accumulated roughly 22 million streams. Further attention arrived via “My City,” “Be Okay,” and “Still Remain,” all of which featured on the May 2020 album Now I Rise.