This week in the Press, Rocks Off talked to Spearhead founder and front man Michael Franti about Bob Marley, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell (who signed Marley and U2) and the left-field success of the Bay Area group's hit single "Say Hey (I Love You)" after almost two decades of consciousness-raising, reggae-informed hip-hop.

Here's the rest of our conversation, which wound from Stevie Wonder's Songs In the Key of Life through Franti's collaborators Sly & Robbie, bounced off Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and wound up with the current tribulations of John Mayer, who brings Franti and Spearhead to Toyota Center tonight.

Rocks Off: What was the first album that had a major impact on you?

Michael Franti: It was Stevie Wonder's Songs In the Key of Life. It was just a record that was in our house, and I spent a long time listening to it. Mainly when my brother was away from the house because it was his record. If he found out I was playing his records he would have kicked my butt. Those were the first songs where I ever sat down and read the lyrics, looked at the album cover and played the songs over and over.

RO: Are there any causes or charities that are especially close to your heart?

MF: I'm an ambassador for this organization, CARE. CARE does aid work in developing nations, particularly around addressing poverty through the education of young girls and women. It's been shown that that's the key to eradicating poverty is through educating girls because they end up being the matriarchs of their communities, and stay in the land and raise the kids off the community as opposed to the men, who when they're educated, leave and go somewhere else. So I travel around the world with them.

I was in East Timor a few weeks ago, visiting farming collectives where they use really simple tools to get through - they have nine months when they can grow things, and then there's three months when there's no food because it's arid. So they take sheets of plastic to create water-catchers so they can feed their families during those three months and have water.

C: Besides the most recent Spearhead record (All Rebel Rockers), what are a few of your favorite other Sly & Robbie productions?

MF: I think my favorite record of theirs is just called Sly & Robbie Reggae Greats. It's dub mixes of all the hit songs they've done, like with Black Uhuru. That's probably my favorite of all the stuff that they've done, but I'm a huge fan of everything they've done, from working with No Doubt to they did a whole album with Bob Dylan that was really cool and a record recently with Sinead O'Connor that was really great. But mostly it's their dancehall and reggae stuff.