Dancehall and Reggae superstar Shaggy wants the world to know that it is really the Jamaican culture that gave birth to some of the most prominent music genres in the world today.
In and interview with Billboard Magazine, the “It wasn’t me singer” explains how Dancehall birthed other genres of music and how he witnessed the phenomenon first hand.
A lot of people see different styles of music coming up. When you look at reggaetón, before reggaetón comes dancehall. Those are things that people need to know. I was at Erasmus Hall when El General created the first reggaetón record. We went to school together. I’m on one bench and he was on one desk, and we were spitting lyrics. And to see this art form, that he took dancehall records and sang them in Spanish and then created what is now reggaetón, to see it being this multimillion-dollar entity, it’s amazing.
When you look at Afrobeats, I remember going to Africa for years. … Dancehall was the main music played in a lot of these countries. And when you listen to Afrobeats, it’s also a birth child of what dancehall was.
So it’s great for this platform to educate people on the significance of the Jamaican culture and dancehall culture and popular music.
Hip-hop itself came from Kool Herc, originated out of Jamaica. This small island with about 3 million people has an amazing impact culturally, globally. And it should be celebrated and at least people should be educated on it. So I’ll use my platform to do that.
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