Runkus unveils SUPERNOVA, a spiritually driven reggae collaboration

Runkus turned SUPERNOVA into a 13-track reggae statement that runs about 50 minutes and asks listeners to hear faith, resistance, grief, joy and intellect in one sweep. Released on May 1, 2026 through Easy Star Records under license from Runkus Music and Isolated Labs Media LLC, the album is built less like a loose playlist and more like a designed transmission.

That design is the point. In his interview, Runkus framed the project as both scientific and spiritual, and that balance explains why SUPERNOVA feels so deliberate. He treated the record as a piece of music that can communicate on more than one level, with structure doing as much work as melody. The opening and closing audio excerpts come from the same conversation between Paul Holdengräber and Tavares Strachan, a choice that makes the album loop back on itself rather than simply wind down. The start foreshadows the end, and the end gives the beginning a new meaning.

Strachan is not a background name here. Runkus described him as a creative, spiritual and emotional co-creator of the project, not just a featured collaborator. That fits Strachan’s own profile as a Bahamian conceptual artist born in 1979, a MacArthur Fellow whose work has long moved across science, technology, mythology, history and displacement. The collaboration gives SUPERNOVA an art-world edge without pulling it away from the riddim. It also helps explain why spoken-word fragments sit inside the record as part of the music, not as decoration.

The guest list gives the album extra weight. Peter Tosh appears on “SHEEP,” while Sean Paul shows up on “SURE AS THE SUN,” placing Runkus’s vision beside two of the most recognizable names in Jamaican music. Bandcamp lists “THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF” as the 13th track, and the full sequence reinforces the idea that this is a record meant to be absorbed from front to back. Easy Star’s pre-save and pre-order push before release only sharpened the sense that this was a major album launch, not a one-off drop.

Runkus’s wider profile makes the ambition feel earned. His Bandcamp bio says he won a MOBO Award for work on Bashy’s Being Poor Is Expensive, and that he has also been nominated for GRAMMY, Juno and Ivor Novello Awards. With SUPERNOVA, he sounds like an artist intent on making contemporary Jamaican music that can dance, think and hold its shape under repeated listening.