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“This album is from my heart,” says Ziggy Marley of his second solo album, Love is My Religion (Tuff Gong Worldwide). Embracing both the spiritual and emotional side of life, Ziggy has definitively come into his own as an artist. The twelve-track album, scheduled for release early July, showcases Ziggy’s tightly rolled talents as a songwriter (writing all cuts), musician (playing most of the instruments) and producer (shepherding all dozen tracks, with three coproduced by Grammy winner Ross Hogarth). The only thing more joyful than making it, says Ziggy, is the anticipation of the global tour he expects to kick off this summer.

Written “all over the world,” with some songs penned during his youth, Love Is My Religion expands upon the personal, social and political themes explored in Ziggy’s debut CD, Dragonfly. Its musical center is clearly reggae, peppered by African percussion and other flavors. Opening with the subversively danceable “Into the Groove,” Ziggy delves into an upbeat meditation on finding one’s self. On the title track, “Love is My Religion,” his message is one that “people need to hear,” a unifying devotion to love that “needs to be preached in churches and mosque and synagogues.” The notion of overcoming stereotypes and superstition informs the slinky “Black Cat,” while the romantic “Make Some Music” finds a partner in the mid-tempo “A Lifetime.”