Top 100 Shaggy Quotes

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 like that raw energy that I get from an audience.

Reggae is a culture. It’s easy, laid-back.

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’ve been criticized for doing so – crossover music. But I never claimed to be a pure dancehall artist.

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.

I cleaned many a toilet.

I came to the Unites States and realised I had a knack for coming up with rhymes and lyrics.

‘Fields of Gold’ is my favourite record.

I live vicariously through my songs.

I love Indian food.

I used to do three or four songs a day, just write them – boom, boom, boom, and done – because of how spontaneous I was.

Music, music, music. It doesn’t get much better than that! It pretty much consumes my life.

I got the name in primary school because my hair was shaggy. And I didn’t like it; I thought it was derogatory.

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.

Making records is not brain surgery.

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.

‘Shaggy’ is a brand.

I think the reason I got into the music business was basically for the live aspect of it.

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 have a festival called Shaggy and Friends, which is a charity event to raise funds for a hospital.

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 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.

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.’

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 reggae fraternity is a small fraternity.

When magic happens, it just happens, brother.

I’m not big on collaborations with ‘superstars.’ It generally doesn’t work for me.

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.

My existence wouldn’t be the same if there weren’t women.

I love Indian food.

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.

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’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’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.

When I look back at the people who shaped me, that made a difference in my life, most of them were women.

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.

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 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.

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.

Making records is not brain surgery.

You’ve always got to try and reinvent yourself.

You don’t create legends out of other legends.

If you listen to all my earlier stuff, it wasn’t ‘authentic reggae,’ so to speak.

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.

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.

Women love to talk, so you gotta be the guy that listens – not just listens but is interested.

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 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.

I came to the Unites States and realised I had a knack for coming up with rhymes and lyrics.

A lot of true Jamaican artists don’t understand the importance of radio so tend not to tap into that as a result.

The thing about Shaggy’s records are those records are very timeless.

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.

Reggae is a culture. It’s easy, laid-back.

I like things that catch your ears.

I want to build a fanbase. I want people to like my albums even more so than singles.

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 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 like having big hooks and big records and sing-a-longs.

The thing about Shaggy’s records are those records are very timeless.

I’m not the guy to get big record company budgets. My budget is Britney Spears’ catering money.

I’m from a single-parent family. My mom is like my mom and dad. She’s my world.

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 always had these big records with people who were relatively unknown.

I have to be me, which is, don’t like a lot of crowds, don’t like a lot of attention – kind of being by myself.

‘Shaggy’ was a nickname before it was ever a stage name. I have no problem with it.

I’m still amazed at how the universe works.

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 used to do three or four songs a day, just write them – boom, boom, boom, and done – because of how spontaneous I was.

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.

My career has taken so many directions.

‘Lucky Day’ is what I would call the Shaggy roller-coaster ride. It takes you to different moods. I listen to music in moods.

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.

I’m not big on collaborations with ‘superstars.’ It generally doesn’t work for me.

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.

When magic happens, it just happens, brother.

I live vicariously through my songs.

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.

My children are a joy to be around.

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 got to prove myself all the time. And that’s good. It makes you stronger.