How Portuguese reggae and R&B sensation Richie Campbell is revitalising his home country's industry

Tonight’s show is a sold-out step up from the last time five years ago, and with good reason – Campbell is at the top of his game. To say the 36-year-old Portuguese star is rising in his country's reggae scene would be an understatement. It’s more reasonable to say he is Portugal’s reggae scene. With ambitions to emulate what he was first introduced to by his mother when he was growing up, Campbell is on a mission to sincerely be a proponent for his beloved genre.

This year's Heartbreak & Other Stories – his sixth album – is a brooding metropolis of smooth R&B, glossy hooks, shadowy reggae rhythms, and the same plentiful sincerity he’s mined since day one. It’s the crux of this evening, and with his glorious return to the Altice stage, comes a testament to his ambitions. It’s a showcase of the talent he’s made a space for – multiple guests join him throughout – with him, the humble conductor rarely basking in the 20,000-strong crowd's adoration. It’s Richie Campbell’s vision coming to life, bringing the same beaming joy and unity reggae first instilled into him when he was younger.

“I know I'm an oddity, you get what I'm saying?” Campbell is entirely aware of his perception. His accent is a swirl of Jamaican and Portuguese. But his has been a multifaceted journey; to prove he belongs and of patience and virtue. He speaks with intensity, relishing the opportunity to tell his story.

Not gaining recognition until he hit 25, Campbell spent his time before this amassing knowledge, and ingratiating within the reggae culture. “In the end, it made me a well-rounded artist and business person,” he says of this challenge in his dressing room, in the nondescript depths of the arena, fresh from sound checking tonight's show – which also includes a full-bodied gospel choir. “So now there's very few things that can surprise me or that can knock me off my balance.“

His mother was first introduced to the sounds of reggae when she was in London. In the 1970s, as the Windrush immigrants continued arriving, as did the sounds of their homeland. The interpolation and assimilation into their new culture on British shores – which was fizzing with its own tension – led to a softly sunny outlook taking precedence. As this culture bloomed and blossomed, so did the ideas it would eventually relate to a young Campbell. His understanding of what reggae offers is key to his story, and his becoming a disciple of its island soundtrack: “I think once you start listening to it, and you understand the lyrics, there is, in my opinion, no going back. There's really no going back.”

Being so enamoured with it from such a young age meant that his exploration into becoming a reggae artist himself was a natural move, even if, on the surface, it scanned odd. "It’s pretty much all I heard when I was growing up in the house,” he recalls. “So I just blindly thought I could be irregardless because that was the music I was listening to. I just knew that if I wanted to be a reggae artist, I didn't want to be just a white kid from Lisbon singing reggae.“

Jamaica is the centre of Campbell’s music universe. It’s the motherland he’s adopted to give his career direction. It’s where he knew he had to conquer before he could begin his objective of establishing his artistic imprint. First heading there when he was 16, he’s endeavoured to spend a couple of months there every year since.

First linking up with his sole contact in Jamaica, who introduced him to late reggae icon Garnett Silk’s ex-manager, Campbell remembers the deep end he found himself in. “He just threw me into the fire,” he says with wide-eyed remembrance. “He had me go into the most dangerous areas in Kingston you can imagine to go to the studio." It's in these sessions Campbell cut his teeth. With fellow vying artists hounding outside the studios, shouting and singing their verses for his beats and rhythms in an attempt to usurp Campbell’s opportunity, he had to sharpen up, and fast.

“Those experiences gave me the confidence to be like, yeah, I can stand toe to toe with any Jamaican artist and be like, ‘Yeah, I do this shit’,” he proudly declares. “And I've been very well received in Jamaica. So that to me is the most important thing. If I wasn't well received by the Jamaican audience and Jamaican artists, I wouldn't feel confident in doing what I do.”

Campbell’s break came at the same time reggae began slowly exploding in little pockets around Europe. Releasing his debut album – My Path – in 2010 he found a space was waiting for him. “Out of chance, reggae started being very big in Europe around the time that I started making music, and I started going to Jamaica,” he explains. “So my music accidentally blew up in Portugal because of that reggae trend that was going on at the time.”

He cites the likes of German reggae artist Gentleman and controversial Jamaica megastar Sizzla as opening the European gates: “All these big artists were coming through and Portugal just found my music in between this wave of reggae. All of a sudden I was huge,” says Campbell. “It was pretty much by accident. It was through the internet; no labels; no radio; no nothing. And then all of a sudden, I sold out a 7000 people venue with no album; no radio; no label; no nothing. Then it was just alright, we have a foundation we could work on – and we just kept working.”

Which is what he’s done across his six albums. As his success has grown, he’s quick to share the cultural profits. Starting his own agency – Bridgetown – in 2016, he’s nurturing the next generation of artists because the path he forged was a lonely endeavour. “I had nobody above me that could give me some pointers and say, ‘Yo, this is how you should manage your career. This is what you should do this, you shouldn't do this’,” he says. “I felt that growth coming up. It was harder for me than it is for people in other countries. So I feel that responsibility because there's a lot of talent in Portugal. The reason why music in Portugal isn't that developed is not because of a lack of talent. It's because of a lack of infrastructure.”

As he was growing up, it was also Portugal's lack of relatable talent that struck Campbell. While at home he was constantly soaking in the reggae sounds joyfully radiating around his house, at school, it was a different story. “You couldn't imagine how it was growing up in Portugal and your friends used to listen to old Portuguese artists that in my opinion was so bad,” he laughs. “I was listening to Bob Marley at home and then I went to school and they were trying to show me stuff that was light years behind.”

In recent years Campbell has opted to craft more R&B and dancehall sounds. His 2017 album Lisboa – an ode to his home city – is a bridge between his two worlds. While he’s focused on moving forward and developing, his heart is forever in Kingston. But, Campbell is an artist. “I wanted to make sure that I was putting out something that added to the previous work,” he says of his recent output. “And also, nowadays, a lot of people have this rush to drop music and they feel like they have to be current all the time. Fortunately, I've been able to have a good following that understands that my music takes a little more time and they wait for me.” And if anything, Richie Campbell’s story proves, good things come to those who wait.