OCTOBER 2026 ISSUE

OCTOBER 2026 ISSUE   A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the October 2026 issue – OUT NOW! Click to buy this issue and read more… SAM POUNDS “I think it’s a time where the more I make music and the more I’m on this journey, I find myself creating more music that feels close to home. You can, I think, just by listening to some of the stuff I’m doing now, just imagine how I grew up, – and that’s exactly what I want. My mom is who I have left now and we’re real close. My grandparents are gone, father’s gone… the last one standing is my mom. I think about her often when I’m writing something new. ‘Will my mom approve of this?’ Because she’s got good taste.” Sam Pounds, soul singer, songwriter, producer and beatmaker from LA is on the line, talking openly about how and why he does what he does… … … Click here to buy and read more… JAH DECKO It used to be said of Ivanhoe Martin, Jimmy Cliff’s character in The Harder They Come, that he’d achieved the twin peaks of Jamaican culture – those of a reggae artist and notorious gunman. A decade later and Bob Marley wished to do the same thing with reggae and football but had to settle for having a famous Jamaican footballer as his closest friend and sometime manager. Up until now, the nearest anyone’s come to ticking both those boxes is Dutch player Ruud Gullit, who had a couple of chart hits in the Netherlands, just a year after he’d dedicated his European Footballer of the Year award to Nelson Mandela, who was still imprisoned at the time. Gullit, the son of Surinamese immigrants, grew up in Amsterdam. Fast forward to today, and former professional footballer Darl Douglas – aka reggae singer Jah Decko – shares certain similarities with Gullit, and not only because he was a well-known Dutch football star with dreadlocks…   Click here to buy and read more… QUEEN IFRICA They call Queen Ifrica the “Fyah Muma,” and for good reason. There isn’t another woman artist in the entire reggae/dancehall sphere who’s attracted controversy on such a regular basis – not in a bid to court publicity for herself, but by speaking out with unflinching honesty on topics that are all too often swept under the carpet. In 2021, she recorded her debut track for Junior Brown’s Nuh Rush Records, Predators Paradise, on which she rails against child molesters, rapists and women beaters, whilst decrying the culture of silence and lack of accountability that prevents perpetrators from facing justice. She accused Jamaican society of turning a blind eye to the victims’ suffering and drew upon her own personal experience when putting such a message across – something she first spoke about publicly on her 2007 hit Daddy [Don’t Touch Me There]…   Click here to buy and read more… BETTYE LAVETTE After all these years and a lifetime of adventures – the latter candidly related in A Woman Like Me, the autobiography, published by Penguin on Sept 27 – there’s not too much a mere journalist can say to Bettye Lavette that will truly shock her. But I think I near as damn managed it the other day, albeit by accident. Had she considered, I asked as reverentially as possible, that her biggest successes had come in a different century to the one in which she had started out? Her response had all the, ‘I don’t believe this muthafucka said that’ that she could pack into it. “Ha-ha-ha! I hadn’t even thought about that! Oh my goodness… you make it even worse than it already is! Daddy?” She’s calling across the room to her husband, Kevin Kiley. “Daddy, you hear what he just said? I hadn’t even thought about that. Oh! OK… let’s just go on past that.”   Click here to buy and read more…