The president is using Twitter like a teenager, it’s immature to me.” If you look at what Rasta has offered to the world – reggae – it’s a music that’s trying to build bridges and make connections in a positive way,” he says, although it seems there are limits: “Would I play for Donald Trump? I don’t think so. “It means one love, if you want to get it into a slogan. After he left school, he adopted his dad’s Rastafarian faith. Still, when Marley shelved plans to become an architect in favour of music, he never shied away from his father’s legacy. So it was interesting to grow up around that knowledge.” He would be singing against people in my stepfather’s position, which to him was Babylon. My father was a Rasta and very much from that Marcus Garvey, black upliftment movement. “My stepfather and my little brother and sister are white Jamaicans – I was the only one of brown complexion in the house that we were in. He was brought up in a privileged area of Kingston called Stony Hill by his mother Cindy Breakspeare, a former Miss World and the subject of the Wailers song Is This Love?, and her husband Tom Tavares-Finson, a criminal attorney and politician. But according to Marley, there was no guarantee he would follow in his father’s footsteps. Rastafarianism and weed are, of course, major components of the family business. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian He says Jay-Z was recognised, although not in the manner he might have expected: “Bunches of girls would run up and say, ‘Is Beyoncé ’usband!’” he chuckles. Marley gave the rapper a tour of Kingston.

He also performed on Bruno Mars’s debut album and with SuperHeavy, a bizarre agglomeration of rock royalty that also included Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart, Joss Stone and Bollywood composer AR Rahman and on Jay-Z’s 4:44 album, singing a version of Jacob Miller’s old roots reggae track Tenement Yard. He won a Grammy for his 2005 breakthrough Welcome to Jamrock and topped the US charts in 2010 thanks to his collaborative album with Nas, Distant Relatives. The Melody Makers, fronted by Damian’s brother Ziggy and featuring their siblings Stephen, Sharon and Cedella, had a couple of hit albums in the 80s, but more recently it is Damian, Marley’s youngest child, who has enjoyed the limelight, thanks to a canny fusion of reggae, dancehall and hip-hop.

His father Bob was not one of life’s monogamists and the number of children he had is open to debate, but the official figure stands at 11. He is not there in his capacity as a musician, although he is, by some distance, the most successful of the sprawling Marley clan. “You know, your guess is as good as mine.” “What am I going to be doing there?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. They’re left flowing as he leaves for the House of Commons. He says he has been growing them since 1996 and they now reach the floor, which is not without problems: a few years back, a video went viral featuring Marley preparing to play football by stuffing his dreads into a backpack. E ven by Rasta standards, Damian Marley’s dreadlocks look incredible.

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