Emperor Gorilla

Emperor Gorilla Is Building His Own Table in Aruba

There’s a yard on Aruba where roots reggae still gets made the old way. Nobody’s renting the room by the hour. Nobody’s waiting on a label to say yes.

That yard belongs to O’Neil Lattery, who most people know as Emperor Gorilla Jamaican-born, Aruba based, and somehow a recording artist, a producer, and a builder all at once, though talk to him for five minutes and you realize he doesn’t really see those as three different jobs.

He showed up on the island at a time when the live scene here was mostly rock, and started carving out room for something else. Not the only one doing it, but one of the names that stuck among the people taking roots and Rasta music seriously. His first professional session happened back in Kingston, at Marcus Studio on First Avenue. The second was at Grafton Studio, out in Vineyard Town. From there it was Red Hills land, cultivation, the parts of Rasta life that don’t show up on a record credit but shape everything that does.

When he got to Aruba, he didn’t chase quick visibility. He started laying pipe. Literally, in some cases he helped inspire collaborations like The Shocking Band, who are still playing today, while he was pouring concrete and running cable for what would eventually become his own studio.

The music

The songs carry a lot of that same DNA bass and rhythm doing the heavy lifting, lyrics moving between love, Africa, Jamaica, and pointed social commentary.

“Mama Africa” traces a route through Africa, Jamaica, and Europe land, borders, what colonial extraction actually took before landing on an image of a continent finally standing on its own roots again, growing the way a tree grows instead of the way it’s told to.

“Jamaica Jamaica” turns the lens homeward. Lattery keeps coming back to the idea of Jamaica as the maker of music, of farmers, of culture and asks what’s left of that when making starts getting replaced by copying and status. It’s really a question aimed at the next generation: what is Jamaica actually handing down right now?

Then there’s “She’s in Love,” which drops the social commentary entirely and just sits with intimacy for a while. Love here isn’t a spectacle, it’s something tended watered, looked after, allowed to take its time. Same language of land and growth that runs through the rest of his catalogue, just turned inward.

There’s video work too, including one clip that’s just called “Coil Skill” which, once you’ve seen the length of his dreadlocks coiled up on top of his head, needs no further explanation.

Single Release

4:30

She is in Love

Reggae

Roots

Conscious

Emperor Gorilla’s Love Song Doesn’t Rush Anything.

Stream Online

Emperor Gorilla Steps Out of the Yard and Into a Love Song

Most of Emperor Gorilla's catalogue is built on social commentary and roots consciousness but on "She's in Love with Me," he sets that aside and writes about something quieter: love as a thing you tend to, slowly, over time, rather than something that just happens to you.