Some artists are bound to an image: Bob Marley has dreadlocks, Matisyahu has a beard. But that's a reminder that the whole thing is not about style. It's about music.

Before I was 14, I wanted to be a singer, an actor, or a hockey player. By 15, I knew I was going to be a singer.

Reggae music isn't Jewish, but a lot of the ideas are.

A lot of people in the religious world believe that by secularizing, or viewing the changes as secular, such as dropping the beard and changing my appearance, they consider this to be a fall.

There is an idea in Kabbalah that the creation of the world is created through space. God is an ever present Being, and in order for anything outside of Him to exist, like this world for example, there needs to be what's called a TumTum[a], or a withdrawal of Godly-like. And that withdrawal happens not by connection but actually by separation. Conflict. And in the gap of that conflict is where the world is situated. That's where the world is created and lived.

I don't think you could pull one Bob Marley song that didn't have quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament.

Some artists are bound to an image: Bob Marley has dreadlocks, Matisyahu has a beard. But that's a reminder that the whole thing is not about style. It's about music.