On a mission to win everyone
For more than two decades, pop-dancehall artist Shaggy has kept the party going
If you haven’t changed your mind about Shaggy by now, you’re never going to change your mind about Shaggy.
Still, at 50, the Gulf War veteran responsible for such cartoonish pop-dancehall smashes as “Oh Carolina,” “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me” around the turn of the millennium has stuck around long enough to overcome most resisters.
His hits have proven themselves over time more of an amiably constant background presence than an affront to human decency, anyway, and Shaggy has contented himself for most of the years since that early-2000s run at the international pop charts with making music aimed primarily at reggae audiences rather than chasing world domination.
Shaggy seems content to make music that pleases Shaggy himself, first and foremost.
Acase in point would be last year’s surprisingly successful 44/876 album, a not-nearly-as-awful-as-it-sounds collaboration with BFF Sting — yes,
that Sting — that astonished even its two creators by selling more than a million copies worldwide, winning Best Reggae Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards and becoming an unlikely pivot back toward the mainstream for both of them.
Shaggy quips that he couldn’t “find a more credible person” to have given him belated credibility with listeners on the rock side of the spectrum who might previously have laughed him off. But it’s certainly not like he and Sting cooked up 44/876 with any kind of agenda beyond a shared laugh and a good excuse to hit the road together.
“It all was born out of that. You gotta understand we never set out to make a record together,” says Shaggy, born Orville Richard Burrell, from the New York studio where he’s producing a couple of tracks for Jamaican dancehall singer Spice.
“We had a friendship outside of music and, once we started going into music, we realized how much deeper that friendship was and how much fun we were having. So it was like, ‘F--- it.’ We were gonna go against what everybody thought — including the record company because everybody there was convinced it wouldn’t do s---. But we did it because we liked it and because we have a genuine friendship.
“And Sting always says … on paper it doesn’t look like it will work. But then you come out and with Sting, really, what doesn’t work? You come in and there’s a s---load of hits that he has and a s---load of hits that I have and … whether you like
the artist or not, you’re gonna know those songs. What’s there not to enjoy?” Shaggy says.
Shaggy’s and Sting’s sold-out Toronto performance at the Phoenix last September was indeed far more bearable than it might seem and was conducted with a contagious spirit of unpretentious fun. And a similar spirit of unpretentious fun for fun’s sake convinced Shaggy to sign on for the late-summer tour with pals Ali Campbell and Astro of UB40 that will arrive at Rebel in Toronto on Aug. 28, and for which rehearsals were to commence in Jamaica the day after we spoke.
As he puts it: “They’ve got some amazing songs, I’ve got some amazing songs, and we can rock the crowd and have some fun with it. And it pays. So why not have a party with these guys?”
Touring with a reggae mainstay like UB40 further fulfils Shaggy’s stated mandate to reconnect with “my Jamaican roots” on his latest solo album Wah Gwaan?!, an infectious (if maybe a bit too long) hunk of island-riddim fluff that marks something of a return to the lighthearted reggae/pop crossover fare for which he was known 20 years ago. Albeit with an effort to occasionally offer something “a little bit more substantial” in the lyric sheet and a lingering whiff of the Police hovering over tracks like “Friends,” despite Sting’s absence from the new recording (he still turned up to play with Shaggy at the Wah Gwaan?! release party in New York in May).
“I wanted to come back to what Shaggy does. I am the king of hybrid,” Shaggy says. “The label is ‘reggae,’ but I’ve never, ever sat down and claimed that I’ve made reggae in its 100 per cent purest form … And, as a matter of fact, I don’t think anybody in Jamaica that I know makes reggae in its purest form. So I wanted to come back and do what I’m known for, which is making these hybrid songs. But I wanted to make it a little bit more personal because now I’m older and I can’t be talking about chicks, parties and cars, you know? I wanted it to have a message. I wanted to touch on some personal matters in my life.”
So, yes, there are songs about Shaggy’s strained relationship with his mother, his recent efforts to rid himself of bad energies within his inner circle and the importance of taking time to smell the roses before life passes you by to be found on Wah Gwaan?!, but they’re not so plentiful as to crowd out the party jams and odes to the pleasures of “Makeup Sex” and puttin’ ya “Money Up.”
Shaggy, a fan of Canada — “where even my albums that really don’t do well somehow do well” — fondly recalls getting about as drunk as he’s ever been at an awards show after winning International Album of the Year for Hot Shot at the 2002 Juno Awards in St. John’s, N.L. He also scores some Cancon points for featuring Danforth-based YouTube sensation Alexander Stewart on the album’s lead single, “You.”
And hey, if any of the old, white rock-’n’-rollers who quietly jumped on the Shaggy bandwagon at Sting’s tacit urging with 44/876 wanna stick around for the ride, he’s happy to have them along. The barriers that might once have kept those two audiences apart are crumbling once and for all, he believes.
“People like to put things in boxes and, fortunately, with the new generation that’s comin’ on, with the millennials, that’s slowly being erased and eroded,” Shaggy says. “We see little Black kids who wanna be white kids, we see little white kids who wanna be Black kids, which is why I’m happy about where the world is going, and the power of the internet and people getting into other people’s cultures.
“I think that’s why racism will never stand because this generation that’s comin’ up is just not f---in’ with that. And I love where everything is going.”
Next on Shaggy’s mission to win over everyone left to win over? Charming the kiddies with a role as Sebastian the singing lobster in ABC’s forthcoming live broadcast of The Little Mermaid.
Due to air Nov. 5 and recently described by director Hamish Hamilton as an “interesting hybrid” of live theatre, puppetry and Disney’s 1989 animated film, the production also boasts Moana’s Auli’i Cravalho and rapper Queen Latifah in musical roles. Unsurprisingly, Shaggy signed on because it sounded like another good time had just landed in his lap. “You know what, man? What is ordained for you is ordained for you,” he laughs. “I cannot look at you and say I went out and auditioned for it. They called me and asked me if I wanted it and I said, ‘Sure.’ I’m a big fan of movie money. I have kids. My daughters thought I was the coolest thing in the world … I’m really, really looking forward to it and I’m just gonna have a good time with it.”