Malie Donn sets July 24 release for debut album The Golden Child

Malie Donn is lining up his first full album for July 24, and The Golden Child is being pushed as more than a first LP. The 20-track set arrives with the kind of scale that signals a real career move in dancehall, not just another run of singles, and the title track, Golden Child, featuring Squash, gives the project an instant anchor.

The tracklist points to a broad play. Songs such as Holiday, Miami, Winning and Badman Treat suggest Malie Donn is working across street narratives, lifestyle records and motivational cuts, with enough range to reach beyond the core fan base that first carried him. That mix matters for an artist who has spent the last two years turning momentum into a larger body of work.

This is not Malie Donn’s first step, either. His debut EP, The Grand Rising, came out on Nov. 22, 2024 through VPAL Music and VP Records as an 11-track release, and it made a clean first mark by debuting at No. 12 on the U.S. iTunes Reggae Albums chart. The project also brought in Squash, Armanii and Byron Messia, while Alive, his cut with Byron Messia, broke through onto the Top 100 Reggae Songs chart.

That earlier release was treated as a growth move from the start. Malie Donn said then that The Grand Rising was his first official project and that it was personal to him, but he was not ready to call it an album yet. He has been building toward this moment since his 2023 breakout with V6, which helped push his name deeper into the dancehall conversation and set up the harder, more visible rollout now attached to The Golden Child.

The larger campaign has also been moving in public. His Brooklyn NYC Take Over event in May drew enough demand that promoters had to secure a larger venue, and Holiday was slated to drop on May 22 as part of the build-up. By the time July 24 arrives, Malie Donn will be testing the same thing every serious dancehall artist has to answer: whether the singles, the features and the street heat can hold together across a full album.

VP Records has been describing this generation of dancehall acts as young artists who lean into lyrics about poverty, wealth and upward mobility while using sharp visuals and social media to keep the audience engaged. The Golden Child fits that lane closely. If it lands, it should do more than add another release to Malie Donn’s catalog. It will reset the conversation around him.