Podbit · The Louis Theroux Podcast
Cara had always loved music but didn't believe in herself enough to pursue it until sobriety forced her to confront and accept every part of who she was. The polarities she'd spent years numbing — the dark, the light, the shame — became the raw material for her debut album. Loving all of it, not just the palatable bits, was the precondition for making anything real.
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At 49:20 · chapter starts 48:10
The aftermath of the overdose becomes the real turning point. A sober mentor made Cara a striking offer: stay sober for a year, and he'd personally buy her a kilo of cocaine to see if she still wanted it — not as provocation, but as absolute certainty that anyone who reached that milestone would never go back. She stayed. He was right. The cycle stopped being fun. She was praying daily for it to end and wanting to create something good from the wreckage. Music had always been there, but she hadn't loved herself enough to believe she could do it. Sobriety changed that: the process of self-forgiveness, of accepting the dark and the light in equal measure, gave her the artist's perspective she needed. The debut album Not Normal is the direct product of that process — and she speaks about it as the beginning of something, not a conclusion. [1] — Cara Delevingne "A sober mentor made Cara a wild offer: stay clean for a year, and he'd buy her a kilo of cocaine to see if she still wanted it. The point w…" 48:08
A sober mentor told Cara he would buy her a kilo of cocaine after one year of sobriety, confident she would no longer want it — a bet she says proved correct.
Cara has been sober since 2022 and credits music as the creative outlet and emotional anchor that keeps her clean and sane.
Cara's debut album Not Normal, inspired by her recovery journey, is set for release in summer 2026 and is preceded by singles I Forgot and Out of My Head.
Reggae didn't emerge from thin air — it was built layer by layer from mento in the 1940s, ska in the late 1950s, and rocksteady in the mid-1960s. Each stage absorbed new influences, from transistor radios picking up Miami R&B to the distinctive 2-and-4 rhythmic accent that defines the genre.
Before hip-hop existed, Jamaican DJs were already doing it. Electricity spreading across Jamaica enabled mobile 'sound systems,' and DJs developed toasting — speaking and singing over recorded music — a tradition that DJ Kool Herc brought from Kingston to the Bronx at age 12.
Joe Higgs is reggae's great unsung hero. This Kingston musician took teenage Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer under his wing and taught them how to sing, write songs, and make music — at a time when most artists would have focused on their own careers. Without him, the Wailers probably just would have sucked.
Reggae archivist Roger Steffens' analogy says it all: Bob Marley was reggae's Martin Luther King Jr., making the music universally palatable; Peter Tosh was its Malcolm X, inserting fierce militant political energy. Together, they gave the Wailers a depth no single voice could achieve alone.
King Tubby built his own hardware from cast-off recording gear to strip vocals and create dubbed-out instrumental reggae — essentially inventing electronic music in Kingston before Kraftwerk did it in Germany. The dubplate he created became the raw material for DJs to toast over, seeding hip-hop.
Two days before the 1976 Smile Jamaica anti-violence concert, gunmen shot Bob Marley in the chest and shoulder, shot Rita Marley, and wounded two others. He showed up and played anyway. The concert had already drawn accusations that Marley was a tool of the PNP government — a charge that frustrated him deeply.
Peter Tosh's killer was a man Tosh had taken in after prison, giving him shelter and food. The man repaid that generosity by holding Tosh hostage, torturing him for money, and shooting him in the head. It is one of the most brutal betrayals in music history.
The Windrush Generation brought Caribbean music to London after World War II, and reggae's 2-and-4 rhythm lodged itself deep in British culture — giving birth to ska bands like The Specials, pop acts like UB40, and even punk. Johnny Rotten was a reggae fan, and Public Image Limited has the dub influence to prove it.
Reggaetón didn't come from nowhere. It emerged from underground Spanish-language reggae-rap scenes in Panama and Puerto Rico, drawing directly on Jamaican reggae's rhythms and attitude. The line from Kingston to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance is a straight one.
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