-- Shaheem Reid
No wonder dancehall hitman Sean Paul can flow — he has an aptitude for
aquatics in his blood.
"I remember being a bathtub singer. You know, the type that sings and
everybody's like, 'Shut up,' " says Sean Paul Henriques, whose parents were
swimmers on the Jamaican national team in the 1960s.
These days Paul, who also swam in his fair share of water polo and swim
competitions as a teen, still has everybody talking with a mix of reggae
DJing and singing that Jamaicans have dubbed "sing-jay" (think of the reggae
equivalent to Ja Rule on "Rainy Dayz"). But it's not water that's finally
making him a recognizable name after six years of coming up with smashes.
It's fire.
"The words I use in this song, we don't usually use those terms in Jamaica
— 'Gimme the light, pass the dro,' " he said of his surprise hit "Gimme
the Light" and its stimulant-friendly lyrics. "I did it so [American] heads
can pick up on it. It's a party song. I'm glad people take that in that
context. I'm not telling kids to go do this."
As a youth in Kingston, it was music that filtered in from the U.S. that
would be one of Paul's greatest life influences.
"[I'm a] big hip-hop fan since being a kid," he said. "It was the first
music that spoke to me and made me feel like, 'Yeah.' They were expressing
something like how I would express myself, in hip-hop music and dancehall
music. Hip-hop and dancehall bought me more into [other kinds] of music. My
flow follows sometimes what's going on in the hip-hop industry even though
I'm speaking Jamaican patois."
Paul's aspiration to follow in the paw prints of rap/reggae hybrid expert
Supercat wouldn't come to fruition for a few years — he had to get the
blessings of his mother first.
"I begged my mama," Paul remembered. "I had them buy me a keyboard, and
that's where my whole music genesis came from."
But even with the equipment supplied by his parents, Paul still had to
convince his mom that the money he was bringing in as a chef and a bank
teller would be nothing compared to his dream profession as DJ
extraordinaire (not to be confused with a DJ in the U.S. — dancehall
DJs rock the mic like hip-hop MCs.)
"I said to her, This is what I want to do,' " said Paul, a graduate of
Kingston's UTECH University. "Let me try to do this. Give me a year after
school."
He didn't even need that long. His first try at putting out a song, "Baby
Girl," became a radio hit in Jamaica. Two years later he started to flood
the Caribbean with smashes like "Infiltrate" and "Deport Them," both of
which made it onto his U.S. debut, Stage One (2000).
"By the time my first album was out, I had been out in Jamaican three or
four years, but I had hits out at that time that were bona fide hits," Paul
explained. "Coming out with my first album, I didn't want these songs to be
left out, so I included them."
With the U.S. market being difficult for many reggae artist to break
through, Stage One suffered from meager sales, even though "Deport
Them" became a club staple. Paul, who can be caught on upcoming albums by
Mya and Beenie Man as well as the Clipse's remix to "Grindin'," said he's
studied and found the perfect formula for his follow-up, Dutty Rock.
"This album, I'm trying to show growth where my music is spread out to more
than just the dancehall riddims," he said. "Sometimes in the biz, there's a
lot of kids that do stuff the same ways. Sometimes you have to do things
different from that mainstream and just make your music the way it feels. A
lot of people in Jamaica won't use the words I did in ['Gimme the Light'].
But it's not only my lyrics, it's the way I say it.
"I been doing some different things," he continued. "Doing some of my songs
in Spanish. I don't really speak Spanish, but I was taught by this dude
that's from Cuba. I'm trying to stick out in different ways."
Dutty Rock's "Punkie" finds the rude boy flexing his bilingual
linguistics while waiting on a girl's love. The Neptunes-produced "Bubble"
shows Paul lusting for loins.
" 'Bubble,' it's basically another party song," he explained. "I'm talking
to a girl. In Jamaica, [when] you say 'bubble' you're talking about a girl,
how her shape is — nice and round. 'Girl, give me your bubble.' "
Besides the Neptunes, Tony Touch and Roots affiliate Rahzel also
collaborated with Paul on the LP. The co-stars Paul holds closet to his
heart, however, are members of his Dutty Cup Crew, who are all basically
"doing their own thing" now.
"Dutty Cup Crew is a crew I been firing with from 1995," he said, explaining
the album's title. " 'Dutty yeah' means 'Yaaayyy, we in the house. Sean Paul
and the crew is in here.' At first we were telling people it meant we work
hard. How you may say, 'That's dirty,' we work hard at what we do. Dutty is
also a chalice pipe. We graduated from that kind of vibe, but we shout out
to each other."
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