Top 10 Greatest Reggae Artists of All Time

Who is the most famous reggae artist of all time? Bob Marley is widely regarded as reggae's most famous artist, with estimated sales exceeding 75 million records worldwide.

Which artist coined the word 'reggae'? Toots and the Maytals are credited with popularising the term 'reggae' through their 1968 single "Do the Reggay."

Who are the original Wailers? The original Wailers were Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer, who formed the group in Kingston, Jamaica in 1963.

What makes reggae music culturally significant? Reggae carries themes of resistance, spirituality, and social commentary, and was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2018.

Who is reggae's Crown Prince? Dennis Brown was known as the Crown Prince of Reggae and was a favourite singer of Bob Marley.

"Reggae" as a ranking category covers several genuinely different lanes: roots reggae's spiritual and political core, built on Rastafarian themes and militant grooves; the vocal, rocksteady-descended tradition built on tenor harmony singing; and later dancehall-adjacent and crossover strands aimed at a wider commercial audience. Ranking artists from all three lanes on one list means comparing musicians who were never really competing in the same space to begin with, and a ranking built around global commercial reach will land very differently than one built around influence and standing inside Jamaica itself.

Bob Marley's crossover into a genuinely global audience was so much larger than any other reggae artist's that his shadow shapes how the rest of this list tends to get discussed — other major figures are frequently framed by what they didn't achieve internationally rather than judged on their own musical terms. Inside Jamaica and among reggae historians, though, artists are typically judged on their contribution to the genre's development and their standing among peers, a measure that runs separately from global sales and often produces a different ranking than the one crossover fame alone would suggest.