The return of Mister Boombastic
Shaggy is about to bring a blast from the past to the UK. MARION McMULLEN finds out what drives the 51-year-old dancehall star
YOUR music career has now spanned close to three decades. What still motivates you?
I just do music because I’m really not good at anything else. Honestly, you don’t want to see me kick a ball. Trust me, it ain’t pretty.
I’ve a knack for writing great melodies and obviously we did the Sting album and we won a Grammy. Three years before that we did Need Your Love, which was a top five single in America, which made me happy. I’m still writing songs that have relevancy within dancehall and I write for other people also. I don’t have any aspirations to be any mogul or have riches. I just want to play music and be happy, that’s it.
You served with the United States Marine Corps when you were younger. Is that experience something that has always stuck with you?
I was in the first Gulf War so I know all about that. I don’t think you’re going to go through any war without having some sort of trauma. It just comes with it.
I’m in a position where I can do a lot of work with the military, even as far as doing concerts for them and doing shows in Bosnia and Germany.
How important is it for you to give back to the community?
For me, coming from humble beginnings to now being at this level – I played for the Queen’s birthday – when you’re sitting around and dining with kings and queens, [having been] a little kid that came from Jamaica, it’s humbling. After a while, you realise just how very fortunate you are and I don’t think that was given to me just so I could walk around drinking and partying. It had to be something greater. I have to use this platform I have to bring people together to do something amazing.
How did your partnership with Sting come about?
I’VE known Sting for years. We have a mutual friend in common, Martin
Kierszenbaum. He was A&R for us both at Interscope. Then Martin started managing Sting and then managed me and he just thought that we would work well together.
We went into the studio to do one song and then we thought that we had a lot in common on many levels and that turned into a friendship... which then developed into an album. We just couldn’t get enough of each other and the way we make music, and the laughs and the fun, we just said ‘We’re gonna take this show on the road’.
Your joint album 44/876 won a Grammy. Did you expect to receive such an amazing response?
We didn’t know what to do with that thing because Sting & Shaggy on paper looks really weird. That’s kind of what attracted us to it anyway, the fact that no one was really expecting it and everybody would be sitting there thinking “What the f*** is it?”. But one thing was undeniable, which we knew it would be, was that once you came to a show, you would leave entertained. The smiles on people’s faces, that’s all that matters really.
You’ve had four UK number one singles. Do you feel at home here?
I used to come over to the UK for years. It’s almost as if people thought I lived there. I had a few number ones and a lot of pop records.
It started in 1992 with Oh, Carolina, which was the first dancehall record that went into the British chart at number
one, and then we were on Top Of The Pops four times, it was the first time dancehall really did that as well.
Then I debuted at number one with Boombastic and it was a first time for reggae and dancehall again. At that point, I started to get to know everyone over there so England and the whole of the UK was a big part of that time for me. I have a lot of friends in the UK that I’ve known over the years.
We’re about to see you here as part of the Blast Off! Tour. Are you looking forward to being back on the road?
Yeah! I’ve literally just got back off the road with UB40 in North America, so this is a perfect time to be hitting the UK and Ireland. It’s a great line-up also. As soon as I looked at it I said, ‘Yeah, I definitely wanna go.’ It’s a line-up of great hits. It’s going to be good vibes. I’ve done a couple of shows with Nelly on several occasions and we’ve got Salt-N-Pepa and Blu Cantrell. I’m sure there will be a lot of guests coming in and out.
What have been your own personal career highlights?
There are a lot. Meeting James Brown and him being such a big Shaggy fan was an out-of-body experience.
You must be proud of your charity work...
A hospital for children (the Bustamante Hospital for Children in Kinsgton, Jamaica) was what I chose to get behind because it was the only one in the Englishspeaking Caribbean.
I had the ability to get sponsorship and pull people together and create these massive concerts (the biennial Shaggy and Friends concerts). We were able to build their cardiac wing, and were very instrumental in the building of the cath lab and all the equipment.
I’m also a brand ambassador for Food For The Poor, which is the fifth largest charity in the US. I do a lot of work with Home Base, which is a charity for the military to combat invisible wounds and I work with Chain Of Hope who do cardiac operations for little babies in Third World countries.
What else is in the pipeline? Sting and I might get back in the studio as there’s a project we’re discussing, so we’ll see how that works. It’s going to be something off the wall. It seems so far fetched, people might not understand it, but that’s how we like it. When you’ve been doing things so long, you just look for things that excite you. ●●Shaggy is at Resorts World Arena, NEC, on March 12.