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I used to do three or four songs a day, just write them - boom, boom, boom, and done - because of how spontaneous I was.
Gays and lesbians should have the same rights as anybody else, and when they're in Jamaica, they do have the same rights.
I get called everything from 'Mr Boombastic' to 'Mr Lover Lover' to 'Mr It Wasn't Me.' It's whatever is hot at that point.
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.
'Lucky Day' is what I would call the Shaggy roller-coaster ride. It takes you to different moods. I listen to music in moods.
If you look at my track record, there was nothing on radio that sounded like 'Oh Carolina,' 'Mr Bombastic' when they came out.
The greatest thing about me is I have always been able to reinvent. We have done that about three or four times with my sound.
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.
I'm like a surfer right now. I'm just surfing the wave. Except that I can't swim, so I'm on the board trying to hold on tight.
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.
When we do reggae, it's normally a one-chord or a two-chord, or whatever it is. With Sting, there'll be chord changes, key changes.
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.
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.
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 just think, as a people in general, we should always look at ourselves as the underdog, so we should always go harder than the next person.
You got to understand: when you go into a record company and give them a something that doesn't sound like what's on the radio, it's hard to sell it.
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.
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?
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.
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 go to bed late, and I wake up early; in this game, to win it, you have to do that. The military prepared me to do that: you go to bed late and wake up early.
America is a symbol of freedom - it's a symbol of democracy - and if that is threatened, we have to take this platform and use it to be a voice for the voiceless.
I don't want another 'It Wasn't Me.' I've been asked that question so many times. Do I want a song of that magnitude? Great, always, but not the same type of music.
I always been a lover of music and it all started with me trying to make dubplates and I couldn't afford to hire people to do dubplates, so I started doing them myself.
I don't make as many records as other people do because I prefer the live side of it - and my records are so big that they keep me touring for years upon years and years.
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.
Although sometimes I know it seems impossible, there ain't no need in drowning in your sorrow. If things are as bad as they can be, you can be sure there'll be a brighter tomorrow.
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.
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.
I just put people on my records that I think bring something really unique to the song, and that's what's going to make it live over time. Not the fact that an artist might be 'hot' at the time.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
I just got in music because it was a hobby. I got into clubs for free, got to drink for free and left with the hottest girl from the night. I never dreamed it would be for me to go on this kind of ride at all.
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 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.
I think that anybody, once we leave Jamaica, automatically, any citizen becomes an ambassador for the flag, for Jamiaca. It's a country that's so rich in culture. We even have a bobsled team, and we ain't even got snow. We do everything in extreme.
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've seen the harshest of reggae purists come give me my props because I've been at it for so long... They've seen me come from the hardest of hard-core dancehall to where I am, and they've heard my music change through the years. Some might not agree, but they respect.
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.
We don't have all this gay-bashing crime. You don't see that. It's not there. That is not really happening in Jamaica. But because a few artists basically sing it and put records out and the media runs with it, then the stigma becomes big, and now we're trapped with that whole thing. It's really sad.
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 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.