Songfacts®:

• On this 1999 track, Burning Spear looks back on his career. He recalls making his way to the Studio One recording facility in Kingston, Jamaica. Founded by Jamaican producer Clement "Coxsone" Dodd in the early 1960s, Studio One became a hub for Jamaican musicians, singers, and songwriters, and helped launch the careers of many of Jamaica's most famous artists, including Bob Marley.
  
  I start singing in the late sixtees
  Told about Studio One by Bob Marley
  
  Burning Spear met Bob Marley by chance deep in the Saint Ann's countryside, close to Marley's birthplace of Nine Mile, while Spear was seeking marijuana plants and other produce to barter back in town. "That area is where most of the Herb was cultivated at that time, so we went into that area to get some good smoke," Spear told Mojo magazine with a chuckle. "And I saw Bob coming down the street with his donkey and a lot of plants. Bob was going to his farm, doing his own cultivation."
  
  Spear asked Marley how he could get started in this music business. Although the Wailers had left Studio One three years earlier in 1966, Marley still believed Clement Dodd's label was the best place for a new talent to start.
  
  "So I came to Studio One and tell Mr. Dodd, Bob say I should come to you and Mr. Dodd say I should sing what I've got," he said. "The first song that came out is 'Door Peep.' And Mr. Dodd was happy. He never heard anything like that before, so to him, the gold."
• Dodd released "Door Peep" as Burning Spear's first single, but it did not perform well on the Jamaican charts. Nonetheless, Spear's career took a dramatic turn with the release of his seminal 1975 album Marcus Garvey, which propelled him to stardom in Jamaica and earned him a devoted following in the United Kingdom.
• "As It Is" is the opening track of Calling Rastafari, which Spear recorded at Grove Music Studio in Ocho Rios. It won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album at the 2000 Grammy Awards.