Eddie Murphy, serious about music, records reggae song

Eddie Murphy may be best known as an actor and comedian, but he spends most of his days working on music.

"In my downtime, that's what I do all the time is music," says Murphy, who'll make his latest song, reggae tune Oh Jah Jah, available for digital download on Tuesday. "I'm just not (always) putting it out. I've got shelves and shelves, hours and hours of music over the last 20 years. Some of it's horrible, but some of it is cool."Murphy, 53, deemed Oh Jah Jah strong enough to see the light of day. The track, which he wrote and co-produced, has a classic reggae groove but timely lyrics.

"I actually wrote this song the week the ebola outbreak jumped off," he says. "The second line in the song, when I go, 'The devil's on the move and the world's gone crazy,' that line was 'ebola's on the move.' But I was like, that'll date the record, so let me say 'the devil.' That never goes out. The devil's always on the move."

Murphy had a No. 2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985 with the Rick James-producedParty All the Time. He has released music occasionally over the years, including a reggae track with Snoop Lion called Red Light and a slow-jam R&B ballad calledPromise (You Won't Break My Heart) in 2013.

When he released Red Lion and Promise, Murphy talked of following those tracks with a full album. That album never materialized, and Murphy is non-committal about releasing one. "The way the world is now, it's like everybody puts the singles out; it's single-crazy," he says. "If I put out a song, and the song connects and people like it and all that, then I might put an album out."

Murphy's love of reggae began when he discovered Bob Marley's music as a teenager. From Marley, he moved on to acts like Gregory Isaacs, Peter Tosh, Garnett Silk, Chronixx, Elephant Man, Beenie Man and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry.

"There's no other island like Jamaica in the Caribbean," Murphy says. "You have so many brilliant musicians come from this island."

Murphy says his "ultimate fantasy" would be to find some way to combine all of his performing passions in a live setting. But a simple return to stand-up holds little appeal to him.

"When I was doing stand-up, there was 20 stand-up comics; now, there's, you know, 20,000 of them," he says. "Why would you come out and just be another one of the dudes cracking jokes? I'd have to do everything I do onstage. It'd have to be music and comedy."

Murphy doesn't have definite plans to return to the stage, but he also doesn't think he has created unreasonable expectations by staying away from live performances for all these years.

"I think I've been offstage for so long, there's zero expectation," he says. "Twenty-five years off the stage. So nobody's even thinking about me on the stage. That's perfect. You have no expectations. It's a total clean slate. You could come, and, if you got something special, (expletive) 'em up."