Damian Marley‘s Grammy winning album “Stony Hill” has sold 177,000 units of streams and sales in the U.S. according to data obtained exclusively by WMV from Billboard sales trackers Luminate. Of that amount it earned 49 million on-demand streams as well as 34,000 pure copies.
“Stony Hill” was released on the young Marley’s 39th birthday July 21, 2017 and spawned the single “Nail Pon Cross,” “Medication” featuring Stephen Marley and the celebratory track “Living It Up.”
Stony Hill sold 6000 units of streams and sales in its first week and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Reggae Albums Chart as well as No. 65 on the Billboard 200. It was the most successful reggae album in the US for the year.
Earlier this year after Kabaka Pyramid’s “The Kalling,” won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album, Damian Marley touted his Welcome To Jamrock Cruise as a “statement for reggae”. Speaking with Penta the Sabali singer says,
“It’s a statement for the genre.” The reggae music themed Cruise has been sailing the Caribbean Sea since 2014 with sold out cabins with live performances by some of the top reggae acts. “Over the years there weren’t a lot of people who thought it was possible, a lot of people questioned whether or not we we’d be able to pull out such an event even based on wondering if fans of reggae music would spend that kind of money to go to an event like that,” Damian says.
Damian also spoke about the state of reggae music which has been the subject of much debate in Jamaica.
“I think that the genre is in an innovation phase right now, you have a lot of young artists and producers who are trying new things,” the certified Gold selling artist says.
The reggae royalty musician who turns 45 today further stated that, “I don’t necessarily think that they have fully found themselves or a new sound that’s really going to resonate on a really wide-scale scale, but I think they’re experimenting. There needs to be a balance of us still giving a platform to the original cultural style of reggae music, the orthodox style.”
