In this, the summer of our political discontent, there is another voice calling for change whose favorables remain high. Pundits will trumpet his progressive viewpoints and declare him a steadfast populist. Though he’s a scion of reggae’s lion king, this eldest son of one of the most famous men in the world has never rested his 30-year career on the laurels of his lineage. He speaks his positivity often and sometimes in proverbs, and is rarely seen without his 100-watt smile. Even his name carries the euphonious zing of a winning campaign: Ziggy 2016.

There are just two problems with this potential alternative candidate: Ziggy Marley, who turns 48 in October, is a native of Jamaica and—even without that constitutional disqualifier— he doesn’t want the job. “I don’t want to be political,” says Marley, taking a break from band rehearsals in Los Angeles. “I made a decision years ago. I don’t want to write about politics. I want to write about spirituality and personality.”

Marley’s previous five studio albums have mostly been about building coalitions of love, from 2003’s Dragonfly through 2014’s Fly Rasta. He’s also racked up a number of Best Reggae Album Grammys along the way, and he’s still affable and relaxed in conversation. He responds candidly but in a quietly measured manner. Marley can certainly still be optimistic but, at the moment, he is concerned.

“There is no future to see if we don’t come together,” he sings on “Start It Up,” the opening track of his sixth solo record, the self-titled Ziggy Marley. The sunny daze bop belies the unambiguous recruitment for revolution, urging people to act now. It’s just the beginning of warnings and wake-up calls loaded into the dozen songs that lyrically recall protest folk and despondent blues.

Marley accepts the assessment with mellow indifference. “I don’t want to tell you what it is,” he says with a laugh. “I have no idea what it is. I just play the music, and I’m happy it gives you what it gives you because of who you are.”

It’s been a little harder to label Marley with each successive recording. He entered the spotlight in the mid-1980s as a teen with brother Stephen and sisters Cedella and Sharon in The Melody Makers. The group’s early output was closest in style to the traditional onedrop reggae popularized by their late father, Bob Marley, though Bob’s approach, to begin with, was already a hybrid of mento, ska and American forms of R&B, rock and blues.

Three decades later, Ziggy’s latest collection, too, bounces between genres, and he employed the talents of both his touring band and longtime aces like drummer Stephen Ferrone of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and jazz session legend Abraham Laboriel on bass. “The people I worked with on this record I have worked with before,” says Marley. “They still bring something else to the table. They’re not just coming to recreate, but to be creative also.”

Marley’s guitar tandem consists of Ian “Breezy” Coleman and Takeshi Akimoto. Coleman has worked with Marley since the Melody Maker days of 1989, while Akimoto joined in 2003 for Marley’s solo debut, Dragonfly. Both have seen firsthand Ziggy’s growth as an artist and a man.

“He’s more mature in his execution, his business and his family,” says Coleman. “He’s a good governor.”

Akimoto points to Marley’s determination to get better as central to his continued success. “He’s improving as he is changing,” he says.

Writing and producing his latest album himself, Marley took on such tasks as charting horn parts for guests The Regiment Horns and directing the voices of the One World Chorus. “I enjoy it, and it is difficult at the same time, sometimes,” Marley says. “I understand the difficult part is a necessary part. That is how you grow.”

There are some time signature shifts and funky dance-floor breaks. There are hints of old-school new wave, with popping synths and drum programming, or whispers of Spanish guitar and ironic pan drum accents.

Coleman, who worked with Ziggy on the final mix of the record, says that they were driven to find that winning combination in each song. “We have to feel it,” the guitarist explains. “We like to get the mix started from the drum and bass, get them grooving. Then, all other things can be added. It’s all about space and timing.”

Marley adds: “I’m looking to make music interesting for those who look deeper into it.”

On the most critical and melancholy cut, “Heaven Can’t Take It,” Stephen Marley drops in for a vocal cameo and borrows from patriarch Bob’s “Zion Train” on its somber, dirge-like outro. It’s a stinging appraisal of failed leadership, racial divides and civil violence, and is as sad and frustrated as Ziggy’s ever allowed himself to be on any song.

“I don’t know if these are the leaders we even want,” says Marley. “Across the world, the leaders have let down the people, this planet. There is another generation coming— our children. We have to instill these things from childhood. It’s up to us.”

Leadership has long been a hallmark of the Marley family. Bob was an unrelenting competitor—earning the sobriquets Tuff Gong and Skipper—and unapologetic when winning foot races against his children on the beaches of Jamaica. Ferocious in his love of soccer, Bob bestowed his darting son David with the nickname of Ziggy, slang for a little marijuana joint, while on the backyard pitch.

Since 2006, Ziggy has been the skipper, issuing his music on his own independent label, Tuff Gong Worldwide, a descendant of Bob’s Tuff Gong imprint, founded in Kingston in 1965. His company headquarters are based in Los Angeles, the city that Ziggy and his wife, Orly, and their four children also call home; they welcomed the newest Marley, son Isaiah, in March. While Ziggy has spent the better part of 30 years living in America, the lessons of his youth remain close.

“Culturally, the way I am, the way I think, the attitude— a lot of it is because I grew up not only in Jamaica, but in the culture of Rasta,” he says. “I like it. It’s a positive thing for me.”

As for what he sees every day in this country, Marley is troubled. “What I feel now is compassion and concern for the people,” he says. “I have come to have heartfelt feelings about the people in America and how the system is affecting [them].”

There are solutions, or at least responses, that Marley has offered, none of which is more stereotypical to fundamental Rastafarian beliefs (and, coincidentally, relevant to the current political climate) than marijuana use. While Marley has been a vocal supporter of legislation legalizing the plant, he has kept his personal usage relatively private.

It comes as a mild surprise, then, that a closer inspection of the cover of the new album reveals Ziggy holding a ziggy. “I didn’t plan it out,” says Marley with a chuckle. “We liked the picture and didn’t mind that a ziggy was there.”

There will be no candidate Marley in a future election cycle, but just imagine those sloganeers readying a subversive, smile-and-wink shorthand like Ziggy 4 ‘20.

Squaring the plant’s sullied reputation on the bounty of misinformation put forth by corporations, Marley sees the necessity and benefit of re-education. “What I’ve read and understand is that certain industries profit from the suppression of marijuana and hemp,” he says. “Fossil fuels. Big tobacco. All those guys that are used to drinking champagne are trying to maintain control of their income and their livelihood.”

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For his part, Marley conceived and published the graphic novel Marijuanaman and the accompanying animated Web series in 2011. Its eponymous companion song on the new record details the potential heroics of cannabis.

“It’s reversed. The book is a complement to the song,” Marley explains. “It’s just a fun song, but it speaks to the truth. We talk about leaders, and if leaders were of a different temperament, a different mindset, there would be peace in the world.”

He also cautions that his own mindset under the influence should not be dismissed as an evaporating puff of smoke. Within the anti-war anthem “Butterflies,” Marley sings of the “crazy” things he sometimes thinks about when he partakes in the herb.

“I want to tell people that it is true that we can have peace and love on this Earth—just as much as they can have war and violence and suffering. It’s not a fantasy,” says Marley. “I’m not saying it because I’m smoking, even though you think so.”

Play and work often converge as Ziggy turns his side interests into active pursuits. In his downtime, Marley enjoys staying out of the public eye, working in his garden and catching up on movies. Southern California affords him clear skies and a coastline for spins on his motorcycle.

A vocal advocate of the non-GMO movement, Ziggy launched a line of food products four years ago under the banner Ziggy Marley Organics that offers various coconut oils and roasted hemp seeds. In 2010, Marley and brothers Rohan and Robbie trekked across South Africa on top-gear Ducatis, filming the adventure for an eventual Marley Africa Road Trip mini series. This past winter, Ziggy made his acting debut, appearing on the CBS television show Hawaii Five-O.

“It’s always good to experience life. I feel I grew from that,” Marley says of his day on the show’s set. “It was in the middle of the record. By the time I returned to the album, that experience was already affecting the next step in the music.”

Despite these other pursuits, Marley’s focus is still on the music. He prefers to write alone, outside or in his home studio when his children are at school. Marley composes on guitar and is not satisfied that a song is a song until he can play it as complete.

“I keep singing until it records in my brain,” explains Marley. “I like a song to have a vibe and a spirit. That’s the soul of music right there.”

Coleman adds: “He always maps out what he really wants musically.”

As his own boss, Marley never rushes to meet a label’s deadline or worries about a bottom line.

“Mostly, I wait on the muse,” he says. “It’s always on time when it’s time.”

Last summer, he celebrated and honored his father’s 70th birthday year, performing a special concert with Stephen at the Hollywood Bowl, and curating an album of Bob Marley songs with the One World Chorus. Marley says these were all learning experiences, but those special moments, in particular, were only part of his continuous, and subliminal, creative progression.

“I think all my experiences, from birth until now, are put into my music today,” he says.

For as effective a mouthpiece as an album can be, it is on the road and on the stage where Ziggy connects strongest with his citizenry.

It’s where he finds the pulse of the people. “It’s a more joyful kind of vibe,” Coleman says of performing the new material. “There’s a little more happiness, brightness, and it’s livelier.”

This summer, Marley is on tour across America, playing rural Northeast hamlets like Webster, Mass., and heartland cities such as Lincoln, Neb. He’ll be watching as the country approaches the precipice of political history, and he’ll be singing for changes.

“I want to wake up the people to see the possibilities of common good more than the differences,” says Marley. “Stop hating each other because of political doctrines and racial doctrines. It’s stupid. We need to figure it out.”