Dancehall superstar Shaggy said it was simply a matter of survival when he chose to do what some considered “sold-out and watered-down” pop hits in the early 2000s. The Jamaican artist , platinum record, admitted that critics had bothered him to the point that he “quit pop music and returned to Dancehall” for more “authentic” songs.

Shaggy, 52, explained that he “wanted to do a hybrid style of music,” while talking about his 2001 crossover hits. It was not me and angel with Billboard, in an interview published yesterday. Billboard, this week, listed It was not me and without a doubt Hi baby featuring Bounty Killer among their 100 greatest songs of this year.

“When the great Bob Marley was making his music, he was criticized for not doing genuine reggae,” Shaggy began. “He literally had session musicians play to rock sounds. It was so ironic that today those same recordings are now the model of what reggae is. “

He continued, “If you listen to everyone who makes music today like Popcaan and all those guys, it’s literally the same. It just means we were ahead of our time. I just had the courage to take risks and didn’t listen to the criticism.

Critics’ jabs included the idea that Dancehall songs like It was not me were too old-fashioned, but Shaggy says he understood early on that he needed numbers to progress to the international label MCA Records, where he signed at the time.

“A lot of them just didn’t realize it was survival. I understood it early on by being [signed] to these record companies, that if we weren’t doing numbers, we weren’t going to move forward.

However, the singer admitted that the growing criticism had finally caught his attention. “It bothered me to a point where I quit pop music and went back to dancehall because of what people were saying, ‘He’s sweet’ or ‘He’s too crossover’,” he revealed.

With the critics in mind, Shaggy posted Pagan church in 2007 with guest vocals and a video appearance in hardcore deejay Ninjaman, as the first single from his Poisoning album. “I definitely hit them like a storm because they weren’t expecting it. It was just huge in Jamaica, ”he said.

“So I was really back in the core [of dancehall] and people started to come back with some of my old stuff, ”he continued. “But I didn’t like the pay level, so I went back to pop music. “

Do dancehall for a pop audience

Shaggy explained a bit about his formula for crossover success, especially the mainstream song interpolation, Juice Newton’s. Morning angel and Steve Miller Band’s The Joker in angel.

“We arrived as outsiders. We came from this little island with music that people don’t understand, ”he began. “There is no program director in a radio station who is going to say to himself: ‘Let’s play the reggae record. [Laughs] How does that fit with our beautiful, beautiful pop audience that we have here? ‘ “

“That’s why the samples were so important because they had the elements of that crossbreeding thing to make them say, ‘Okay, maybe that could work because they sampled Juice Newton. “”

angel was No. 1 in 12 countries, including the United States, where it peaked at the top of the Hot 100 display panel and stayed on the chart for 28 weeks.

By making the other timeless hit record, It was not meShaggy also explained that it was a balancing act. “I’m from Kingston, so I can speak real dialect. I would mix it with the Queen’s English, but I would use dancehall melodies and the flow.

“When you have such an English refrain, you have to go to dancehall to bring back the authenticity,” he said. “So they might not get it very well, but they know the flow is so stupid.”

The song, which featured Rikrok’s vocals, is Shaggy’s other best-selling and best-selling single, with multiple platinum certifications in several countries.

Shaggy’s Poisoning the album was followed by the single For your eyes only (2010) with Jamaican singer Alaine. The Shaggy and his friends and the “summer follow-up” Summer in Kingston albums were then released under his own labels in 2011.

In 2012 he was back in pop sampling; this time Cyndi Lauper Girls just wanna have fun for his collaboration with the American rapper Eve entitled Girls just wanna have fun, which met with chart success in Europe.