Dancehall veteran and Grammy-award winning dancehall star, Orville Richard Burrell CD, better known by his stage name Shaggy, is admitting that he shot down the chance to be on Rihanna‘s highly anticipated reggae album.
While the Bajan superstar has enlisted several Jamaican writers and perhaps even collaborators like Koffee and Demarco for the project dubbed “R9” by fans, the offer did not appeal to Mr. Boombastic.
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During a recent interview with UK Daily Star, the dancehall legend said he left the opportunity for younger artistes.
“They approached me for the Rihanna project, yeah. There’s a lot of great people involved, but for me, I didn’t need to audition to be on the record,” Shaggy said.
“I’ll leave that to younger guys. But from what I hear it should be good.”
And while Shaggy himself didn’t feel the need to prove his credentials for Rihanna’s reportedly Caribbean dancehall–inspired album, he was gracious about encouraging her sonic direction.
“It’s healthy competition,” he said.
“Dancehall is in a good place but we need as many people to do this art form as possible. When it crosses over and becomes popular with artists from other genres and other cultures, that can only be good.”
Truly a boombastic mister, even after all these years
