The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2020 - Issue 27

bite music celeb W hen Sean Paul’s single ‘Gimme the Light’ took the commercial charts by storm after its release in May 2002, it firmly put Jamaican dancehall on the path to its greatest period of crossover success. The dance- hall artist was already known for past tracks such as ‘Infiltrate’, ‘No Bligh’, and ‘Baby Girl’ during the 1990s, but as Roger Mac- Kenzie, one half of the production duo at Black Shadow Re- cords said, “We never knew ‘Gimme The Light’ would blow up as big as it did when we recorded it.” He went on to say that they had asked Sean Paul to write some- thing different from what he would normally do, which was usually songs about girls. “He ended up writing the most catch- ing hook on the riddim and arguably the biggest song of his ca- reer.” The artist’s approach made dancehall music more simpli- fied and appreciated with dynamic dance moves choreographed by Tanisha Scott. Whilst the women in Sean Paul’s video were overly sexy, they were a welcome change to the bikini-clad ‘hot- ties’ we normally see. Unlike dancehall artists like Shabba Ranks, Beenie Man, and Bounty Killer, Sean Paul did not have to use a pseudonym for his stage name. He simply used the first two names of his birth name. With his music coming over to mainstream in the noughties, those new to dancehall or the patois language got a few lessons thrown in such as the word ‘dutty’ meaning ‘dirty’. Therefore his album Dutty Rock is ‘Dirty Rock’ which in the artist’s words meant, “Yeah, we rock - or you rock, man. My cool is hardcore.” Interestedly, dancehall reggae described as a ‘musical hybrid that features DJs rapping over an electronic reggae backbeat’ can be traced back to New Orleans R&B in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, 'when Jamaican musicians would listen in to US radio stations and try to emulate the sounds they heard, creat- ing ska in the process’. “In the ‘60s songs like ‘My Boy Lollipop’ was called ska - like No Doubt now,” Sean Paul explained in an interview. “Then it moved to a slower tempo to rocksteady, then moved to reggae.” Before the success of his second album, the artist did excep- tionally well with his first and saw this as an advancement of his career. “Selling 75,000 copies of my first album [Stage One] gave an indication of what was coming,” he added. It was thanks to