{"id":28119,"date":"2024-09-13T05:30:41","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T09:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28119"},"modified":"2024-09-09T12:15:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T16:15:40","slug":"come-fly-wid-reggae-star-shaggy-part-3-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/13\/come-fly-wid-reggae-star-shaggy-part-3-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Come Fly Wid Reggae Star Shaggy (Part 3 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

Shaggy:<\/b> So I put my phone on some Bluetooth. And I have a Sinatra playlist. You know, what a lot of people don\u2019t know is radio stations in Jamaica didn\u2019t start playing reggae music on the radio 24\/7 until around the \u201870s. Before that, it was a lot of American music: people like Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole, and a lot of country music. And Sinatra was a big part of my household growing up.<\/p>\n

But anyway, Sting heard me sing along with one of the songs. He just cocks his head and says, \u201cOh, my God, do that again.\u201d And I kept singing. It was like, \u201cThat\u2019s your key.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d He says, \u201cYour voices are so similar.\u201d He\u2019s always just heard me do dancehall reggae things.<\/p>\n

And Sting\u2019s like, \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be great if we would do a cover of that?\u201d And then he said, \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be great if we do it in reggae?\u201d Then we start talking. Of course we\u2019re having a couple of drinks at this point. And we\u2019re like, \u201cWell, maybe we do an album of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This thing sat around for two years. The world went through Covid, done with Covid, Sting\u2019s playing a residency. I came to see him, and he takes up the guitar, and he started playing a couple of chords from \u201cCome Fly With Me.\u201d I just started singing with him. And he\u2019s like, \u201cWe should really<\/i> do this.\u201d It was about Christmas time. He says, \u201cWe should do it in January.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sting showed up in Miami at my house and says, \u201cCome, Shaggy; let\u2019s do this.\u201d And so now I\u2019m scrambling, trying to get musicians. We flew a couple people in from Jamaica for the rhythm section, and I was like, \u201cOkay, let\u2019s see what we come up with.\u201d Sting picked the songs that were gonna do, and now we had to figure out how to make those chord changes work in reggae to where it sounded cool and not corny.<\/p>\n

And that was where the challenge was, and where the magic came. We averaged about two songs a day on vocals. And within about six weeks, we had the whole project all wrapped up as far as the making of the songs. It was just incredible; we did a couple of shows together, him and me.<\/p>\n

Was CCome Fly Wid Me: The Sinatra Songbook Inna Reggae Style<\/i> pressed on vinyl as well?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, but we did 44\/876<\/i> on vinyl. Funny enough you\u2019re saying this. A couple of weeks ago I was over at Sting\u2019s house. He has this wonderful record player and he looked around and it was like,\u201dYo, we should get this on vinyl.\u201d So that\u2019s probably something that we\u2019ll end up doing.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got two Grammy awards, and at least six other nominations. Beyond the honor of getting them, do awards, make any real difference in your career? <\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it makes any real difference. But, listen: it feels good when you win, man. I\u2019m not even gonna lie. It\u2019s gonna be hard for a guy like me. You see, I will be nominated six or seven times, but I won\u2019t be the guy getting it because I am not your traditional guy.<\/p>\n

And your voters are traditional people, you know, and they\u2019re going to be voting on that Bob Marley style reggae that I don\u2019t particularly make. You know, I represent the genre and I\u2019m from that genre and I respect it and I love it, but I\u2019m not inspired to make it. And the reason is that I look at these guys as masters of their craft. Now, would I be thinking that I could make a record just like Bob Marley and do it better than him? Who am I to think I could be doing it better than Dennis Brown?<\/p>\n

I think what\u2019s a better legacy to me is the barriers that I\u2019ve broken down over three decades. \u201cOh Carolina\u201d was the first dancehall record to ever go #1 in the British chart. \u201cMr. Boombastic\u201d was the first reggae or dancehall record ever to debut<\/i> at #1 in the British chart. I debuted again at #1 with \u201cIt Wasn\u2019t Me.\u201d And I debuted again<\/i> with \u201cAngel\u201d at #1 in the British chart. And the Hot Shot<\/i> album debuted at number one in the British chart. To this day, I\u2019m the only reggae dancehall artist from Jamaica that has a number one Billboard<\/i> album. No one else has.<\/p>\n

We have sold 40 million records. And I was the guy that was responsible to take it to mainstream. And by the way, I did all of this without ever having great executives. You look at great artists, from Springsteen to anybody: They all had great executives who believed in them. This guy don\u2019t. The point I\u2019m trying to make to you is that I have done all of this without having that Tuesday morning conversation, \u201cLet\u2019s put $10 million behind this artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

And why would they? There was no track record of reggae being played on radio in that kind of rotation. I am the first. I think that\u2019s a bigger legacy than any award. I rather go for the reward than the award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… Shaggy: So I put my phone on some Bluetooth. And I have a Sinatra playlist. You know, what a lot of people don\u2019t know is radio […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,63],"tags":[5507],"class_list":["post-28119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-reggae","tag-shaggy","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-63-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28125,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28119\/revisions\/28125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}