Prince Lincoln Thompson
Artist. Rocksteady, reggae, roots
- Active
- 1967-1999
- Sunrise
- 1949, Kingston, Jamaica
- Sunset
- 1999, London, England
- Also known as
- Lincoln Thompson, Prince Lincoln, Royal Rasses, Prince Lincoln and the Royal Rasses
Prince Lincoln Thompson was a singer and songwriter whose records with the Royal Rasses in the late 1970s are among the finest statements of Rastafarian consciousness in roots reggae.
Born in Kingston, he entered the business in the late 1960s in the rocksteady harmony group the Tartans, alongside Lindbergh "Preps" Lewis, Cedric Myton (later of the Congos) and Devon Russell. In the first half of the 1970s he cut three solo singles for Studio One, and then formed the Royal Rasses with a changing set of harmony singers, Myton again among them, issuing their records on his own God Sent label; the first two, in 1976, were "Kingston 11" and "Love the Way It Should Be." At the center of all of it, Angus Taylor wrote, was his "high pitched mellifluous voice, with a timbre quite unlike that of anyone else."
Albums followed, among them Humanity, Experience and Unite the World, and the Royal Rasses tried disco rhythms; Natural Wild, an ambitious double album with the English rock musician Joe Jackson, sold poorly. He returned to the studio several times after that, and departed in London in 1999, at forty-nine; the cause was cancer.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- The Congos (bandmate)
- Coxsone Dodd (producer)
- Studio One (label)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 185, which calls the two 1976 singles "two of the finest expressions of Rastafarian consciousness ever released."
- Angus Taylor, "Prince Lincoln: Ten Years On," United Reggae, January 23, 2009, https://unitedreggae.com/news/n454/012309/prince-lincoln-ten-years-on. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 80, 185.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 185, which judges that he "never quite fulfilled the promise" of the Studio One singles.
- Taylor, "Prince Lincoln: Ten Years On."
- Taylor, "Prince Lincoln: Ten Years On."
- Taylor, "Prince Lincoln: Ten Years On," published on the tenth anniversary of his death.
