LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Shaggy: New York
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After graduating from high school Shaggy grew discouraged with his prospects in Brooklyn and joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1988. Trying to keep a hand in the reggae recording scene, he drove long hours into the night between New York and his Marine base in North Carolina. With the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991 he was sent to Iraq. The experience sharpened his ambitions, and he made profitable use of the long waiting periods required of the U.S. forces by writing a stock of new songs. But he was ... a keen observer of the war's slightly surreal aspect. "It was wild," he told Time.
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Undaunted, Shaggy turned to movie soundtracks to keep his name in the public eye. He appeared on a minor hit duet with Janet Jackson, "Luv Me, Luv Me," from the soundtrack of How Stella Got Her Groove Back in 1998, and followed it by contributing the solo cut "Hope" to For Love of the Game in 1999. By this time, he was able to land a new deal with MCA, and rewarded them with one of the biggest-selling reggae albums ever. Released in 2000, Hot Shot started off slowly as its lead single, "Dance and Shout," flopped in the States. However, a radio DJ in Hawaii downloaded the track "It Wasn't Me" (featuring Rik Rok) from Napster, and began playing it on his show. Soon it was a national hit, rocketing up the pop charts and hitting number one in early 2001; naturally, it did likewise in the U.K. and many other European countries.
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Shaggy is a good example of how a single song can quickly take a relatively unknown performer straight to the top. For him, the song was a cover of the mid-'60s early reggae smash "Oh Carolina" (originally done by the Folkes Brothers for Prince Buster). Making full use of the production expertise of New York recording wizard Sting Int'l, and some excellent back-up musicians, including Latino percussionist Jimmy Delgado, and samples from the original recording and an underlying theme taken from "Peter Gunn," Shaggy added his own special "dog-a-muffin" (his name for his style) touch to the tune and found himself with a runaway international hit that was particularly popular in Britain, where his song received airplay on Radio One (reggae songs almost never get airplay there) and shared the number one spot with a Michael Jackson tune in 1993. Shaggy himself, with his genuine affability, politeness and non threatening charisma, made an excellent impression on the British and performed four weeks in a row on the venerable Top of the Pops television show. Born Orville Richard Burrell in Jamaica, Shaggy was raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn. As a young man, Shaggy had his first dancehall success with the song "Big Up."
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Back in New York at the war's end, Shaggy released several singles on small independent labels that did well in New York's numerous reggae clubs. The most successful of them, "Oh Carolina," was a remake of a pre-reggae classic of Jamaican pop, by a group called the Folkes Brothers, which in turn drew on U.S. soul music sources. Shaggy's version inventively incorporated samples of the original song. "Oh Carolina," recorded while Shaggy was still in the Marines, was released in Great Britain by the larger Greensleeves label, topped pop charts there and in several other countries, and was in turn picked up by the major Virgin International label. That led to the release of Shaggy's debut album, Pure Pleasure, in 1993. Shaggy kept his momentum with his sophomore release. Boombastic, released in 1995, reunited him with the New York reggae DJ Shaun "Sting" Pizzonia, who had produced his earliest dancehall efforts.
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Dancehall reggae master Shaggy returns with his new album Clothes Drop, in stores now! It's a non-stop invigorating explosion of rhythm, devoted to music, fun, the virtues of a woman and the spirit.
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