The world went crazy for his easy, breezy reggae pop, but his hometown didn't want a bar of it. Shaggy tells JOANNA HUNKIN how he won Jamaica over
KEY POINTS:
It is a voice like no other. As soon as the bass drops and the booming, sub-baritone vocals ring across the room, there can be no mistaking the inimitable sound of Shaggy.
From the early days of Boombastic to the mega-selling Hot Shot album in 2000, the Jamaican-born
reggae singer has made a career out of being different. Though his distinctive voice has helped, his ability to fuse mainstream pop with classic reggae jams has been instrumental to his global success. But it didn't win him many fans back in the Caribbean, where dance hall and reggae are the threads that weave the community together.
"Even at the height of It Wasn't Me and Angel, we would headline shows but only for certain types of people," the singer says in his lilting Jamaican drawl.
"The hardcore dance hall people would not turn out for Shaggy."
It was something that had always bothered the singer, who moved to New York at 18 and now divides his time between America and Jamaica.
After a series of problems with his record company, which saw him bounced from label to label, Shaggy decided a change was in order. He jumped ship, went independent and deliberately chased the hardcore, dance hall fanbase that had eluded him. The resulting album Intoxication, was released last year, but never made it to New Zealand due to its limited distribution.
"It was very liberating. We didn't sell a lot of records, which we knew we wouldn't anyway because we didn't have the worldwide distribution and marketing money. But it certainly got me the core audience that I wanted back. I wanted that credible audience to salute me back again and I did get that."
Church Heathen - the album's most successful single - topped the charts in the Caribbean and Jamaica, claiming the number one spot for 19 weeks.
"For the first time in my whole career, I found myself touring the Caribbean solidly," he says proudly.
Having now achieved his aim, Shaggy says his next album will be a return to a major record label and his signature crossover style.
"I can do songs now to bargain and compete with the mainstream," he explains. "It will be crossover but it certainly won't sound like anything else that's out there. I'm always trying to go left field and against the grain."
That capricious approach to music making hasn't made Shaggy popular with record company executives in the past. But after 15 years in the industry, the singer has learned to ignore the suits.
It's a lesson he learned the hard way, following the worldwide success of Hot Shot, which sold more than six million albums in the United States alone.
That success made him a top priority at MCA Records' headquarters - where, suddenly, everyone wanted to know the singer's upcoming plans.
"The drawback to selling a lot of records like I did on MCA, the guys at the top, around the table, come in and say 'I want to hear the next Shaggy album'. And 'by the way, it doesn't sound like the last one that sold us 10 million. Can you make it sound like that?"'
By the time it came to writing Clothesdrop, his seventh studio album, Shaggy was pandering to so many people he knew the record wasn't going to work. "The head of the company would say 'it's great'. And then he gives it to his mailman, and his kids, and his girl on the side.
"I found myself going back in the studio 50 million times trying to correct what the mailman thought was wrong."
Today, Shaggy is back in control of his music and enjoying the challenge of winning new fans - and introducing them to the whole Shaggy spectrum.
As he prepares to tour New Zealand and Australia this summer with the Raggamuffin Festival, the singer is already researching Kiwi music tastes to see how he should put his set together.
"They're not necessarily there just for you. They're there for reggae. It gives you an opportunity to win them over. It's something to look forward to."
LOWDOWN
Who: Shaggy aka Orville Richard Burrell
Born: October 22, 1968, Kingston, Jamaica
Where & when: Plays the Raggamuffin Festival, Rotorua Stadium, February 7
Biggest hits: Oh Carolina (1993), Boombastic (1995), In the Summertime (1995), It Wasn't Me (2001), Angel (2001), Church Heathen (2007)
