Toots and The Maytals – Got To Be Tough

Out this Friday, the new single ‘Got To Be Tough‘ is the debut offering from his forthcoming album of the same name, out 28th August via Trojan Jamaica/BMG. It’s the multiple Grammy winner’s first albums of new music in a decade and the first ever that he has produced himself.

Got To Be Tough’ is an energizing provocation that renews the near six-decade career of the man who launched a new sound and genre with his 1968 release, ‘Do The Reggay.’ During a time of global social and political unrest, Toots’ welcomed return and voice couldn’t be more needed or necessary than ever. Harking back to the start of Ska, during the civil rights movement era in America and Jamaican independence in the 1960s, he has sung iconic truths such as ‘Monkey Man’ and ‘54-46 Was My Number,’ a wry but not bitter response to his unjust incarceration for ganja. Since that wrongful 1966 imprisonment Toots has gained insight into the corrupt systems that try to dominate our bravest endeavors, and it is in his new resistance music, that his anger at and sensitivity to injustice in 2020 is clearer than ever. Returning with a message, with no apology – a warning, as he repeats for emphasis on his latest single.