Lyrical Themes

Most reggae music has always been about social criticism, although some reggae music is about lighter subjects such as personal things like love, sex and socializing. Reggae was a way to create social awareness of the crowd while still having fun with it. Most groups would start off light and then would throw in a song or two about something political, like trashing on materialism or giving their thoughts of legalizing marijuana. Legalization of marijuana is a very popular theme throughout reggae music as it is depicted as something to ease ones troubles. Many artists utilize religious themes into their music as well. For a long while, the Rastafari movement was a very political topic, therefore, everyone had an opinion. Other very popular topics to the reggae genre include black nationalism, anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and Babylon. There was also a lot of music produced in the 1970's and 1980's claiming that better care be taken of the younger generation because they were the future.

There were many reggae artists that have been accused of being homophobic to the point of bordering hate crimes. There were some with lyrics so offensive that many concerts were canceled throughout the world due to artists not agreeing to censor their lyrics as not to offend anyone in any community. The Stop Murder Music coalition started a petition through the dance hall reggae groups that required music companies to stop releasing songs and albums with hate lyrics in 2005. There were several groups that refused to be censored. In 2007 The Reggae Compassion Act was created and groups that refused to be censored were allowed to continue making their music as they wanted but they would only be heard on their CDs. The group assigned to this act were not allowed to play any music with any kind of lyrics that slandered anybody's name in concert.