T: Miami Hip-Hop has been huge for the last couple years, what do you think of the scene?
KM: I'm diggin' it. We there. We got Ricky Ross, we got Trick Daddy, Pitbull, we got Jackie-O, we got Trina. Now they got me but I'm bigger than just Miami...I expand, Africa, South America, Asia, you name it, India, we touch 'em.

T: Do you have a palce in Jamaica again?
KM: Yeah. I have children in Jamaica.

T: How many children do you have of your own?
KM: Of my own? That's not necessarily important (laughs).

T: Who is the eldest of your father's kids?
KM: Sadella, my sister.

T: We recently talked to Issac Hayes son, Ike Dirty and we were asking him if the whole family ever gets together. Does that happen with all the Marleys?
KM: We have done that all our lives. We do that right now. We live in the same neighborhood. So, sometimes I get tired of seeing 'em. I see 'em so much. I'm not joking.

T: What do think of Damian and Stephen's protege Javaughn? You know who I'm talking about?
KM: Yeah, mon, nice. Me know Javaughn for many years, very impressive for a child. I haven't heard the album 'cuz I've been on the road.

T: Has there been a song since Dear Dad that you felt was as important?
KM: Nothing maybe important as that song. No matter if it come and selling 99 million record, it will still never be as important as that song. Lemme tell ya, I'm the one to take your burden, tha's me, I don't release my burden on no-one. So, you see the only way for me to express that and get that off of myself. Writing that song was the hardest and the easiest. Easiset being words flowed like a river but so did tears. That was the first time me really expressed that, and I questioned certain things.

T: Your brothers each have their own sound but they're all similar to your dad. You're a little different, you seem to be heavily influenced by Hip-Hop. We remember you from that V2 record way back.
KM: Yeah, that's the first record, that's that journey right there. But my Hip-Hop influence...I mean, I was raised in Miami. I left Jamaica when I was almost eight years old. For me at that time was a reality check to because I'm coming from the country in Jamaica where for me everything is "free". I'm free to wake up in the morning and walk out in the streets and walk until all hours of night, miles away from my home and my mom's not worried and nobody ain't worried. That's how the country lifestyle is, the whole country is a family. So, no matter where you at. When the time came my grandma moved to America, grandma Henley. When she moved to America, now we find out that the family is moving to America. See in Jamaica you always had this fascination because when they came with the American dollars, at that time, one dollar gave you eight. So, it was like, oooohh. And all the music and all the cartoons was American, so we always had this thing of what America looked like in our head. So, when the opportuniy arrived as a child I was like, okay, well, this is it, I've already pictured what the house looked like, what I'm going into. We had a night flight, I remember this, me and my mom, the rest of the family was already there. I remember looking out from the window and seeing all the lights and thinking, wow, this is it. Got to the neighborhood I was living in and it was nice. And I remember the night when I stepped out the cab, right, I looked up and I was like, this ain't what it looks like in my head...but it's nice. I'm not seeing the real effect of the neighborhood yet. Brother let me tell you, we had the only wooden house on the corner. So, I'm leaving the country in Jamaica and coming to America to a worse house than what we just left. We had a wooden house in Jamaica too. Every other house on the block was made of stone, brah. We had the only wooden house on the block...with the paint chipping off, there was big hole where the kitchen was that you could just look through. Let me tell you brother. I wake up in the morning, brah, and, my god, I wanted to go home that very instant. This was not it. Let me tell you what I went through as a child growing up. I'm in a neighborhood where across the street from me is a empty field, there's a stolen car there every weekend, the police were around there every Thursday, sometimes you get 'em on a Tuesday. In front of my house is where all the crack sells. Right in front of my house, not a few blocks over, literally fifteen steps across the street. I grew up with my neighbor on the left side and my neighbor on my left side having a beef. So, on any given Sunday you can have a shootout going across the street. And the cops ain't coming. I'm literally in the house and they're having a 5-10 minute shootout. So, you become a product of your enviroment. You have to adapt and survive. That's what we are, that's what we do. I can remember my mom telling me stories about the revolutionary side of things. So, if I was not phsyically prepared at the time, I was mentally there. I didn't get the cat jumped over the moon stories as a child, I got Steve Biko, Che Guevera, Fidel Castro, you name it, I got all the revolutionary stories. I was raised by a single mom, as you know my father passed away. My mom was a very strong woman. All my life growing up was just me and her. I had never had to deal with another man in my life. Never. Me and her all the way. Everything I learned in life, I can say I really learned it through her. When they say a woman can't teach a man to be a man, I'm gonna beg to differ. I believe right now as a man, I'm a firm man and everything I learned in life was taught by my mom. Some of course you live and you learn. Some of them they say don't make twice, and I made 'em a few times. Back to Hip-Hop, you can see, being a product of that enviroment from eight years-old, that's what's playing in the hood. That's what you go to school to. Tha became a part of me. Even in my early years, when I just got to Miami, I didn't hear no Hip-Hop for my first year and half. Which I appreciate at the time now too because it allows me to expand as a musician. I left Jamaica when Jamaica only had one radio station. When I came to Miami my mom bought me a nice boombox, I had saw it in a breakdancing movie and I was like, that's what I want. She bought me it and I got home and I tuned into a channel, and I'm like, okay, that's it. 'Cuz I'm figuring it's one radio station, all the same. It was a station called Wild 100 and they only played Top 40 soft rock. So, for the first part I was listening to a lot of Elton John, a lot of Guns 'N Roses, Aerosmith, Van Halen. I appreciated it because I'm from where my dad is original, he's of his own kind, he stand as his own ground. So, when I can hear another artist like that, who's original and stands his own ground. So, it grew on me. After that I found out we had more than one radio station. I remember the first CD my mom bought me was Run-DMC and the first song I fell in love with was You Be Illin'. And from that I was hooked to Hip-Hop.

Thick: Having a legendary musician for a father, did that make you want to get into music or make you wary of it?
Ky-Mani Marley: First, I feel as though this is my destiny. I never chose this. For me growing up, music was the furtherest thing on my mind. I remember my mom used to send me there to guitar lessons on Saturdays. And I thought that was just like the worst punishment to have to go to a guitar lesson on a Saturday. I should be at a park. After a while I stopped going. To me it was all about the athletic side of me, my mom is an athlete. So, for me it was all about the sports. For me, my musical career started by me playing around at a friend's house. I had a friend who had a soundsystem, and him a cut a dubplate. So, he's cutting a dubplate one day and he asked me to sing a song for him. It was kinda outta humour and I was like, alright. He was like, how many people can say they have a Marley dubplate? So, I said, okay. And at that time I was never into music, I'd DJed other people's songs, so we wrote some quick stuff...he never played the dub anyway. But what happened was I started going to his house every weekend, me and couple of my buddies and we started playing around. This producer came in one day and was like, I like your tone, you should really give it a shot and see what can happen. I started going to his house on the weekend because he had a lil' studio set up in his house. One thing lead to the next, before you know it was going there recording song on the weekend and before you know it, I was being offered a contact with Shang Records, the first record label that approached me. And when that came about, that was kinda like, wow! And still at the same time, the reality still didn't hit yet. 'Cuz my whole thing was like, alright, let me jump on this and see what happens. I'm going for a ride, if it happens it happens, if it don't, my friends gon' laugh at me. So, that was my approach to it. It was all fun and games to me. And I did the first album and there was a song on it called Dear Dad. I did a couple of shows and further down I remember this guy came to me...even at this time it was like, okay, I wrote some songs, I'm out here singing it, I got chicks screaming my name, I'm lovin' it. But I remember this one situation this guy came up to me and said to me, that song Dear Dad really did a lot for me a few months ago. And I'm like okay, I'm waiting for him to explain, and he stood in front of me as a grown man and broke down crying. He said a few months ago he lost his dad, the only thing he had in his life, so he felt as though he was alone in the world now. And he said he sat in his room with a pistol cotemplating suicide and he said for some reason something told him to press play on the CD player and the song that came on was Dear Dad. He said in that moment that song saved his life. Then I realized...just the emotion that he expressed in front of me as a man backstage at the concert with hundreds of people walking around me, and him not really caring who was seeing him break down like this, and then for him to tell me that, that song saved his life that gave my career meaning, All of a sudden what was fun and games is now a reality check. That's the moment that moved me in my career to let me know that this is a work here that has to be accomplished. And yes, I am following in my father's footsteps but at the same time I'm doing it in my own light. I'm not trying to replicate the music that my father did. I'm trying to carry on that message, whether it be rebelious "fight the system", or whether it be love, or whether it just be earth, I have to do it in my tone.