An important songwriter who is credited for having penned the wildly popular reggae song "No Woman, No Cry" died this past Sunday on December 28th in a Jamaica. He played a crucial role in moving reggae and indirectly the hip-hop genre forward by writing the song for Bob Marley, as it is considered one of his most well recognized classics. He died in a hospital after losing both legs to Diabetes at the age of 68.

The song appeared for the first time on Bob Marley's album Natty Dread in 1974, and then was released again on a live album in 1975, followed by it's inclusion on what is now considered the best selling reggae album of all time, an internationally recognized greatest hits compilation album in 1984 titled Legend. There are still some skeptics who say Bob Marley wrote the song on his own, but allowed his good friend Vincent Ford who he lived with for a time to write his name on "No Woman, No Cry" and a few others so that he may receive the royalty money for the remainder of his life. But whether Vincent Kingston is actually the author of so many of Bob Marley's hit songs or he was a lucky guy that received a gift from a close friend with the ownership of the songs, after Bob Marley's death in the eighties he stopped writing music.

It's possible that he was so overcome with sadness at having lost his friend to cancer or he was genuinely a good person, but afterwards he began to run a soup kitchen in his native country Jamaica. The song is known by a great number of people for its original version and in its many reincarnations done by The Fugees, Sean Kingston, and Pearl Jam.