Findings and Discussion

Willy (Don't Be Silly)

In Buju's early days, his music was strictly dancehall (2), a subgenre of reggae marked by a basilectal form of Jamaican Creole. In its early days, it was almost exclusively heard and supported by lower-class Jamaicans (3). It often features a lot of ingroup marking to display the artist's legitimacy in the scene. Carmen Fought states, "the pressure to use the heritage language can be particularly strong where the language tied to an ethnic identity is perceived as threatened"(9). Jamaicans of African descent feel this threat constantly, and Buju was no different. In the chorus of this early song, we can see Buju's use of the basilectal form with unu as the second-person plural pronoun and a go to mark the progressive form instead of the standard English form, going. He also uses specific lexical items reserved for members of his community:

Ragamuffin, don't be silly, put some rubbers pon unu willy
AIDS a go 'round and we don' waan catch it
Rude bwoy, don't be silly, rubbers pon unu willy
AIDS a go 'round and we don' waan catch it (1)

Rude bwoy and, especially, ragamuffin illustrate the target of his message: the poor youths of Jamaica. By doing so, he includes himself in this group. Rude boy culture goes back to the early days of ska in the 1960's, still a term used by lower-class Jamaicans, but ragamuffin was a newer term used specifically for artists and fans of the dancehall scene. (3)

Murderer

This song is said to be written in honor of Pan Head, one of Buju’s friends and an upcoming DJ who was killed after leaving a dance in October 1993(2). Especially for persons living in volatile communities, it tells the story of a type of death that is all too common and all too real. Buju berates the murderer for leading a wayward and wicked lifestyle, dooming him to curses and torment. It speaks to the destructive elements in society that continually make people’s lives miserable and cause tragedy with their deeds. It expresses a common sentiment, beseeching them to find alternative, less violent lifestyles, or to seek divine forgiveness and be reformed. While non-violence is a central tenet of Rastafarianism, Buju adds an additional element in Line 17:

Stop committing dirty acts for the high officials (1)

This transforms the violence from a spiritual issue into a class-based one, marking the offender as an agent of the oppressor. This instills an attitude of "us vs. them."

Hills and Valleys

His "us vs. them" approach continues in his next album, Inna Heights. In this particular song, he cautions his own people in a way that any English-speaking listener could understand:

Line 3: Don’t let them fool you 
Line 4: Don’t believe for a minute that they are with you (1)

However, we can also see Buju's use of code-switching that illustrates Davies and Bentahila's other reason for using it in lyrics: "to directly target an audience"(6). In the bridge near the end of the song, he switches to a more basilectal form to specifically target his own people: 

It hard, it hard, it hard (yeah)
Mek them know we waan go home a we yard
It hard, it hard, it hard (let them know)
Let them know we waan go home a we yard
It hard, it hard, it hard (let them know)
Let them know we waan go home a we yard
It hard, it hard, it hard (oh god)
We waan go home (1)

The word yard is of utmost importance in Jamaican culture. It literally represents the communal living situation in which many poorer Jamaicans find themselves.(7) 

Destiny

No other song of Buju's oeuvre more explicitly states the goal of the Rasta, as he repeatedly expresses:

I wanna rule my destiny (1)

The most important word to the Rastafarian is the personal pronoun I. In most reggae songs, there is a reference to I, and it frequently appears in the objective case, because Rastas seek to always be the subject of their story.(4) This is in variation with the objective forms of Standard and Jamaican Creole: me and mi, respectively. Buju uses this form as he plays upon the theme of struggle and freedom, juxtaposing images of bondage and liberty: 

Line 28 Though forces try to hold I down
Line 29 Breaking chains has become the norm (1)

A specific construction used in this song is "I and I," According to Edmonds,  “Since "I‟ in Rastafari thought signifies the divine principle that is in all humanity, "I-an-I‟ is an expression of the oneness between two (or more) persons and between the speaker and God"(8).  

Another way that Rastafarians express their ideology is through morpho-phonemic variation. Iyaric modifies Standard Jamaican English to develop an array of words that contradict the meanings of some lexemes of the lingua franca. As J.W. Pulis posits,  “word- sound power is a way of speaking in which a tension between Creole and Standard English words and meanings are used to contest traditional structures of identity” (12). The new words are called "up-full sounds" and Buju incorporates one in this song:

Line 16 Wisdom overstanding must never be too much (1)

In Iyaric, the word understanding is replaced with overstanding, illustrating the Rastas' belief that acquiring wisdom raises one's standing. Rastafarians believe that no speaker is under, below, or beneath another speaker whether they are speaking Jamaican Creole, Standard Jamaican English or Iyaric. The implication is that people are on the same level, and this is the way in which the language resists the ideas of class distinction and the oppression that goes with it. (12)