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.
When I was doing dancehalls, nobody was doing well in dancehalls. Dancehalls was not mainstream music that was blazing charts and knocking down barriers. This was an underground phenom.
Making records is not brain surgery.
I'm not the guy to get big record company budgets. My budget is Britney Spears' catering money.
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.
I cleaned many a toilet.
I'm not big on collaborations with 'superstars.' It generally doesn't work for me.
I've never been one that really won with major-name collaborators. You take, for instance, 'Angel' with Rayvon. 'It Wasn't Me' was with Rikrok. Nobody knew who those guys were.
I did a record with Janet Jackson, and it went to the top of the charts, and we had all of these complications, and she couldn't be in the video and couldn't do anything for the record. I went through something similar with Pitbull. I think it works really well for a lot of other artists, but for me, it just doesn't work that well.
Music, music, music. It doesn't get much better than that! It pretty much consumes my life.
I'm used to people not getting it. I'll make amazing music, but it's convincing people that it's amazing - that's the problem.
I've been criticized for doing so - crossover music. But I never claimed to be a pure dancehall artist.
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 got the name in primary school because my hair was shaggy. And I didn't like it; I thought it was derogatory.
I prefer working with artists who are prepared to get down in the dungeons and get the job done.
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.
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?
The mainstream is very fickle. If you're hot, they'll mess with you. If you're not, it's out of there.
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.
Even my mom is calling me Shaggy now, which is weird, because Shaggy is more like a character that I play. Shaggy is flamboyant; he's cocky. And I can't live that twenty-four hours a day - hell, no.
