Prezident Brown
Artist. Dancehall, revival
- Active
- 1980s-present
- Sunrise
- Clarendon, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Fitz Albert Cotterell, Prezident Slim Brown, Slim Brown
Prezident Brown is one of the culture-minded deejays who followed Tony Rebel in the 1990s, a north-coast man whose records have kept to roots themes from the start.
Born Fitz Albert Cotterell in Clarendon, in the Bull Head Mountain range, he grew up in Oracabessa, St. Mary, and made his name on sound systems around nearby Ocho Rios, among them Arrows and Jack Ruby's Hi Power. He first went by Slim Brown, after his chief inspiration, U-Brown; Jack Ruby added "Prezident," and after Ruby's sunset he dropped the "Slim." He voiced his first records for Roof International, the Ocho Rios label of Stranger Cole's son Courtney.
He followed with a striking series of cultural records for Barry O'Hare's X-Rated, the most successful of the Ocho Rios labels, among them "Heathen," one of the best of the many cuts of that Marley rhythm in 1996, and for Kariang, the label of the Mystic Revealers. He also recorded for Sly and Robbie's Taxi, Tony Rebel's Flames, the British Jah Warrior and Bobby Digital, for whom "Poor People Cry," "Mr. Want It All" and "Cookie Jar" stand out. A deal with the Dutch company RUNN carried his records across Europe, where he drew a larger following than many more fashionable deejays. Later albums include Generation Next (2003), Common Prosperity (2009) and I Sound Is From Creation (2012), and he tours often in the United States. He has said he wants to "do it poetically," against the faster and more graphic style of younger artists, with "a foot in analog and another foot in digital."
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Sly Dunbar (producer)
- Bobby Digital (producer)
- Tony Rebel (producer)
- Jack Ruby (sound system)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 342, 370.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 370, on his name and the sound systems. On his birthplace, his own account in Jah Rebel, "Prezident Brown: 'I&I Music Is All About Edutainment,'" Reggae.be, August 31, 2015, https://www.reggae.be/nl/magazine/archive/2015-08-31-prezident-brown-i-i-music-is-all-about-edutainment/; the Rough Guide has him born in Oracabessa.
- Justine Amadori Ketola, "Interview: Prezident Brown," Reggaeville, December 17, 2012, https://reggaeville.com/artist-details/prezident-brown/news/view/interview-prezident-brown. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 370, on U-Brown as his "chief inspiration."
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 370. Jah Rebel, "Prezident Brown," says he had earlier recorded for Jack Ruby before Ruby's sunset in 1989.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 370; on "Heathen," also 344, 356.
- Jah Rebel, "Prezident Brown." Ketola, "Interview: Prezident Brown."
- Ketola, "Interview: Prezident Brown."
