Lucky Dube

On 18 October 2017, Gallo Records South Africa released a 25 track limited edition commemorative album titled The Times We've Shared. The album features his biggest hits exclusive performances and 3 previously unreleased tracks.

On 21 October 2008, Rykodisc released a compilation album entitled Retrospective, which featured many of Dube's most influential songs as well as previously unreleased tracks in the United States. The album celebrated Dube's music and honored the contributions he made to South Africa. The Roots Reggae Library has taken steps to store digital versions of the Mbaqange albums made in the 80's. Five of the six albums have been retrieved. Ngikwethembe Na has yet to be found. As one of the first artists to bring African reggae to the mainstream, Dube bridged cultural gaps within the African diaspora. What Lucky Dube's music did was "[present] a praxis of cross-culturality and visionary possibility" that the diaspora at large tends to erase. Dube gave Africa a voice and put its culture on the global stage by joining the global reggae community. Through taking Jamaican roots music back to its roots, he recontextualized the oppression and political struggles that reggae seeps itself in, bringing the basis of the diaspora back in conversation with the diaspora at large to allow for a more pan-African form of cultural expression. Dube's roots reggae brought African people to the table in terms of conversation about the black diaspora by mimicking Caribbean artists' assertions of African authenticity or racial utopia. Lucky Dube ultimately shows how Africans have to find their way into the conversations of the Black Diaspora by mimicking their assertions of African authenticity or racial utopia. Dube catalyzed roots reggae's appearance as a popular form of protest song. This helped “legitimize and strengthen the oppositional gesture in popular African music and culture, particularly for those generations born after decolonization.

On 18 October 2007, Lucky Dube was killed by robbers at a Johannesburg suburb called Rosettenville. Shortly after dropping two of his seven children off at their uncle's house. Dube was driving his Chrysler 300C, which the assailants were after. Police reports suggest he was shot dead by carjackers who did not recognize him and believed that he was Nigerian. Five men were arrested in connection with the murder; three were tried and found guilty on 31 March 2009. Two of the men attempted to escape and were caught. The men were sentenced to life in prison.

In Australia, Lucky Dube's music has found resonance in remote Australian Aboriginal communities, and his popularity has led Lucky Dube to be called "Bigger than the Beatles" throughout much of central and northern Australia. In 2005, Dube was a touring act in Alice Springs, in central Australia, promoted by entrepreneur Scott Boocock, on advice from his friend, Joe Miller, a disc jockey on local First Nations radio station CAAMA Radio, and he had noted that Dube's popularity was growing. Dube's Australian tour started in May 2005, and he played in Alice Springs (to a crowd of 4,000 people), Darwin, Northern Territory, and Cairns, Queensland.

In 1996 he released a compilation album, Serious Reggae Business, which led to him being named the "Best Selling African Recording Artist" at the World Music Awards and the "International Artist of the Year" at the Ghana Music Awards. His next three albums each won South African Music Awards. His most recent album, Respect, earned a European release through a deal with Warner Music. Dube toured internationally, sharing stages with artists such as Sinéad O'Connor, Peter Gabriel and Sting. He appeared at the 1991 Reggae Sunsplash (uniquely that year, was invited back on stage for a 25-minute-long encore) and the 2005 Live 8 event in Johannesburg.

Dube continued to release commercially successful albums. In 1989 he won four OKTV Awards for Prisoner, won another for Captured Live the following year and yet another two for House of Exile the year after. His 1993 album, Victims sold over one million copies worldwide. In 1995 he earned a worldwide recording contract with Motown. His album Trinity was the first release on Tabu Records after Motown's acquisition of the label.

He decided to try the new musical genre and in 1984, released the mini album Rastas Never Die. The record sold poorly – around 4000 units – in comparison to the 30,000 units his mbaqanga records would sell. Keen to suppress anti-apartheid activism, the apartheid regime banned the album in 1985, because of its critical lyrics, for instance in the song "War and Crime". However, he was not discouraged and continued to perform the reggae tracks live and wrote and produced a second reggae album. Think About The Children (1985). It achieved platinum sales status and established Dube as a popular reggae artist in South Africa, in addition to attracting attention outside his homeland.

Lucky Philip Dube (pronounced duu-beh; 3 August 1964 – 18 October 2007) was a South African reggae musician and Rastafarian. He recorded 22 albums in Zulu, English and Afrikaans in a 25-year period and was South Africa's best & biggest-selling reggae artist. Dube was murdered in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosettenville on the evening of 18 October 2007. He was first married to Thobekile Ngcobo in 1989.

Lucky Dube was born in Ermelo, formerly of the Eastern Transvaal, now of Mpumalanga, on 3 August 1964. His parents separated before his birth, and he was raised by his mother, who named him Lucky because she considered his birth fortunate after a number of failed pregnancies. Along with his two siblings, Thandi and Patrick, Dube spent much of his childhood with his grandmother, Sarah, while his mother relocated to work. In a 1999 interview, he described his grandmother as "his greatest love" who "multiplied many things to bring up this responsible individual that I am today."