Matisyahu Going Back To His Musical Roots

Matisyahu's fourth album will have more of an "authentic reggae feel" than this year's Light, which mixed reggae with rock, hip-hop and dancehall music.

The musician, whose real name is Matthew Miller, has always experimented with mixing other styles with reggae.

But Matisyahu says he's inspired by Canada's Dub Trio, the band he's been playing with lately. He says he wants Light's follow-up to have more of a band feel and "capture the organic and improvisational" vibe of his live shows.

"There's nobody I'd rather play music with," he says. "[The Dub Trio] have such an extraordinary sense of music and taste."

To that end, he says he will focus more on dub and reggae next time around. But as he's done in the past, Matisyahu says the disc, which doesn't have a title yet, will still flirt with other genres by mixing them to "try and create different sounds."

Light was a departure from Matisyahu's previous work, since it included collaborations with members of Good Charlotte and could have been described as his most stylistically diverse album to date.

Matisyahu says he attempted to write his lyrics with "a flow" when creating the album as opposed to how he'd worked previously, when he'd fit them around a beat. He also worked with vocal coaches, and Light includes much more singing from the man who was previously better known for rapping in his music.

Of course, reggae and dub are what inspired Matisyahu to get into music in the first place. He describes himself as being "obsessed" with Bob Marley for years. So it's only natural that he says his fourth album will be more in line with traditional reggae and dub.

"Musically, reggae was what inspired me as a singer or a rapper, whatever," he says. "In the last five years or so, I got more interested in different styles. I started to hear how I'd be able to express myself in those styles."

But in the end, he says it all comes back to reggae. That's only natural, since it also led him back to his faith. Matisyahu was born into a Reconstructionist Jewish family, but began following Orthodox Judaism around 2001.

"Part of [my connection to reggae] was the references to the Old Testament, the Bible and songs," Matisyahu says. "I felt like I was a part of that... All of these things that I had cast off as being unimportant I was hearing, and they made me investigate my own heritage."

Matisyahu recently held his fourth annual Festival Of Light in New York City and Brooklyn, N.Y. The yearly celebration marks Hanukkah and this year's extravaganza featured a host of guests including Kid Koala, Gym Class Heroes' Travis McCoy and Kevin Devine.