A new brand of cannabis, to be legally sold in the US, carries the late reggae singer's name. His estate will benefit, but does 'Marley Natural' tarnish his legacy?
A kind of political correctness dictates that one should not be too unkind to Bob Marley, but to turn him into the "Marlboro Man of Marijuana" is a cynical, money-generating move on the part of his estate. During the 1970s, when Marley's was the best-known name in Jamaican reggae, he was actually very much removed from the Jamaican music scene, wasn't he? Island Records transformed him into a semi-divine rock star for a mostly white audience. Today, that same audience will be able to buy bottles of "reggae" skin-moisturiser cream extracted from "Bob Marley" cannabis fibre oil – and now these gimmicky, ganja-infused, mass-market products. It's kind of reductive and naff.
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