Reggae

Maverick Sabre – Come Fly Away

Ok, so I’m going to save the explanation as to how I found out about Maverick Sabre until the end of this post.  For now, a brief intro.  He was born as Michael Stafford in Ireland, and grew up in England.  As a singer/rapper, his career started around 2008, and he released his debut album in 2012 titled “Lonely Are The Brave”.  The track below is from his sophomore album “Innerstanding”, released in 2014.

 

Now, you may be wondering why I would be featuring this artist on TickuTalk since, as most of you can probably guess, this isn’t typically my bag.  No doubt he is a talented singer, but my blog obviously focuses on reggae (with some rare exceptions, one of which I am making now), so what gives?  What gives (and gives generously yet again), is BBC1Xtra.  This episode posted below of the show “Sixty Minutes Live” is hosted by Mista Jam and Seani B, and the featured guest is Chronixx, who brought along some friends to sing with him.  One of those friends was none other than Maverick Sabre.  To be fair, I should mention that I had actually heard of Maverick Sabre at least a year ago, but never really bothered listening to his music since I knew he wasn’t a reggae artist.  Well, that was a mistake.  For your viewing pleasure, watch the video below from about the 17:30 mark to the 22:15 mark (or if you are Chronixx fan, watch the whole damn thing!):

 

When I heard this, I was really impressed.  Not only could this guy sing, but that combination with Chronixx sounded so silky smooth!  Chronixx is a great singer as well, but in this duo, he played the part of the dancehall deejay rather than the crooner, and killed it over a late 90’s dancehall riddim (gunfingers came out for the Bounty Killer verse).  So after seeing THIS video, I googled Maverick Sabre and started listening to his other music.  THAT is how I came across his single “Come Fly Away”, and realized that he was covering his own song in this BBC1Xtra session with Chronixx!  The song choice was sheer brilliance, and I love the way he was able to adapt it to a dancehall riddim.  It sounded so natural that if the BBC1Xtra version was released as a single, I would have never suspected it was a cover (although I’m not sure you can call it cover if it’s your own song to begin with, but I digress).

Anyways, that BBC1Xtra session was quite the moment, and Chronixx was effusive in his praise of Maverick Sabre as he proclaims him to be the best British artist in the world right now.  Chronixx was so jacked, he even went so far as to say that him and Maverick should do a dancehall album together.  After hearing them perform together, the idea certainly isn’t as far fetched as it may have seemed before watching that video.  They held such a great vibe together, that they actually did collaborate on a song about a month after that studio session.  The song isn’t a dancehall track (or even reggae for that matter), but it’s a groovy soulful tune that fans of these artists will surely appreciate:

 

UPDATE: I made an error in my post above.  The last song with Chronixx and Maverick Sabre is not a recent track.  It’s actually a song from Maverick’s second album (which was released in 2015). 

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