You don't create legends out of other legends.
Shaggy
When magic happens, it just happens, brother.
The pop market is a very fickle market, and that's why for me to go into the teeny-pop, 'TRL' mode, it's not really for me.
I prefer working with artists who are prepared to get down in the dungeons and get the job done.
Reggae is a culture. It's easy, laid-back.
The biggest thing I take away from the Army is that work ethic and being able to focus and put your eyes on a goal.
When I look back at the people who shaped me, that made a difference in my life, most of them were women.
The Police, they were the guys that were like the gateway to the mainstream. In England, there was a very strong reggae movement that was going on. Anything that was happening in reggae happened out of England. They were brilliant. They could spot a sound that was cool, the 'it' sound.
I have mixed feelings about Napster. I like what it can do for an unsigned band. It can help them sell 10,000 records. But for an established artist, there's already so much piracy around. They need to regulate it.
I live in Kingston. When I tell people I live in Kingston, they start fearing for my life. People ask me if I have Internet in Jamaica. Like, seriously?
If you look at my track record, there was nothing on radio that sounded like 'Oh Carolina,' 'Mr Bombastic' when they came out.
A lot of people do records, and they get hit records, but we were blessed with a lot of monsters. 'Oh Carolina' was a very monstrous record in 1993; so was 'Boombastic,' 'Angel' and 'It Wasn't Me.'
When you see a Jamaica video, it's always the hood. Everybody in the video's got guns, and the world looks at it like that's what Jamaica's about. And it affects the economics of the music.
A lot of true Jamaican artists don't understand the importance of radio so tend not to tap into that as a result.
I would never be about waking up early and do morning radio and TV back to back had I not been in the military, where they are throwing a garbage can in the middle of my squad bed at 5 o'clock in the morning for four years straight.
The best thing about my house is that I live five minutes from the airport, and since I fly more than I drive, it saves me a lot of time.
I fought for this country.
India is a great place.
If I'm not on tour, then I'm sometimes laying down four or five records at a time.
'Lucky Day' is what I would call the Shaggy roller-coaster ride. It takes you to different moods. I listen to music in moods.
The reggae fraternity is a small fraternity.
Some people get a little shy, you know, and it can take a certain mood or a situation or a vibe for you to relax and come out of your shell.
I'm not the guy to get big record company budgets. My budget is Britney Spears' catering money.
Music, music, music. It doesn't get much better than that! It pretty much consumes my life.
I've always been faced with all kinds of criticism. People were saying, 'Oh, Shaggy is pop. He can't do dancehall,' even though I came from dancehall.
There are those women who degrade the name of women, and there are men who degrade the name of women. But for the most part, we can't live without them.
I'm one of those artists that nobody ever sees coming. We started with Virgin in 1993. If you look at the climate of that time in reggae and you were to pick the top five people that'd have a shot at having mainstream success, I was nowhere in that equation at all.
I am not from a musical family.
I always had these big records with people who were relatively unknown.
I'm from a single-parent family. My mom is like my mom and dad. She's my world.
I came to the Unites States and realised I had a knack for coming up with rhymes and lyrics.
I didn't just sit down and write 'Summer In Kingston' from scratch; it came about from a bunch of songs I already had.
My existence wouldn't be the same if there weren't women.
Ireland kind of reminds me of Jamaicans - there are a lot of Irish people in Jamaica. It's the blend of their easy-going nature, cool mentality, and warmth.
When I was doing 'Hot Shot,' I didn't even have an album deal.
You might be like, 'I want really big hits.' But when you get really big hits, and your label is making $150 million, they are people who are now interested in what you do. They are going to begin to tell you what to do, and so you become important. So your creative freedom - you're not going to have that again.
I'm inspired by day to day life, things that people go through, things that make people tick. Everybody has a story, so you try to put stories into songs and try to make it as entertaining as possible.
'Shaggy' is a brand.
If you look at reggae and dancehall artists in general, there isn't really a big success story. A Shabba Ranks or a Yellowman might have a hit, but there's never a follow up. There's no consistency.
The Irish want to smile, and they want to have fun.
I've been criticized for doing so - crossover music. But I never claimed to be a pure dancehall artist.
I constantly tour every year, around the clock. That's how I make my living, and I do very well. Because I have classic songs.
Making records is not brain surgery.
I want to build a fanbase. I want people to like my albums even more so than singles.
'Shaggy' was a nickname before it was ever a stage name. I have no problem with it.
After I made 'Oh Carolina' in the 1990s, the record company wanted me to copy that sound, and I refused.
I have a festival called Shaggy and Friends, which is a charity event to raise funds for a hospital.
I like that raw energy that I get from an audience.
When I look at my catalog, most of my songs are about love or relationships. And I'm smart enough to say if it's not broken, don't fix it.
My thing is to get people out of the stigma of what a reggae artist should be like.
