A staple of Jamaican gospel music, ‘If I Miss Heaven’ by Reverend Glen Graham is one of those songs that gets the heart racing once it hits the turntable. Music producer Canute Neil Ellis samples the track for ‘Nah Miss It’, released on July 19.
Graham is on Ellis’ version which also features Jason Mighty, J Dat and Orville “Cool Shade” Sutherland. It has a revival flavor, a sound synonymous with the Afrocentric pocomania movement in Jamaica.
“We are embarking on this wonderful journey to win souls for Jesus and building the kingdom. This is how we decided to do it,” said Ellis in a statement.
He added that, “We put a new spin on it (‘If I Miss Heaven’), and our culture and share it with the four corners of the world.”
This is the Orlando, Florida-based Ellis’ follow-up to ‘Rescue Me’, a collaboration between his wife Samantha Gooden and Yomek Radic. That song sampled ‘He Saw my Need’, which was done by influential Jamaican gospel group, The Grace Thrillers.
‘Nah Miss It’ hears him saluting Graham, another pillar of the Caribbean gospel music movement who has been recording music for over 35 years. His songs, which include ‘If You Should be Left Behind’, ‘Mother’s Grave’ and ‘Prepare to Meet me There’, inspired a generation of reggae-gospel acts who emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
