The dancehall music genre need to be producing billionaires, this is the thought of veteran deejay Shaggy, a man who knows the business pretty well.
International recording artist Shaggy has made it clear that Dancehall is long over due for the creation of billionaires, pointing to to Hip Hop, which has produced billionaires within its mainstream era.
“Hip Hop is the only genre that has created 7 billionaires in 20 years,” he mentioned during his keynote speech at the recently held Island Music Conference (IMC) currently underway in Kingston, Jamaica.
“Hip Hop is about 50 years old and if we are talking about hip hop being mainstream it has only been mainstream for about only 20 years and it’s within that time when you saw those billionaires which is a record number,” he continued.
He added that dancehall creators need to recognize their value. “What we have to start doing is realizing our value and create a movement… Shaggy and Sean are not the future, I’m sorry, it is these young artists,” he reiterated.
Shaggy, whose debut album Pure Pleasure turned 30 last year, highlighted the genre’s unique “cool factor” that artists from other genres continue to tap into and maximize. He urged Dancehall artists to capitalize on this and be willing to step out of their comfort zones to achieve greatness
“If you’re smart and have the work ethic and willing to take chances, those billionaires all made it doing this. We are the genre that has the cool factor and continues to have that cool factor and I tell you this because I have been doing this for 35 years and I go in all these rooms all over the world and I’m telling you when you go into a room, they want to be like you,” Shaggy said.
He also reasoned that Jamaican artists have to be willing to endure discomfort to tap into the opportunities that will generate billionaire opulence.
“We need to recognize what we have and really put our best foot forward in trying to capitalize on it and trying to make it bigger and do not be scared of actually stepping out because you cannot achieve greatness without being uncomfortable. You only find your best when you are outside of your comfort zone, and you need to be uncomfortable to make that happen, I say it over and over everyday, you do not want to be the hamster on the wheel,” he advised.
“If you’re the smartest guy in the room then you are in the wrong room, always be around people that are smarter than you, who have achieved more than you who can teach you something and you can learn from them because no matter what room you are in and I have been in a couple of room with billionaires, sometimes everyday and there is one thing they don’t have and that is the cool factor and that’s what we have in abundance here. If we can take the cool factor and the talent we have here and merge it with some work ethics then we will be unstoppable.”he added.
Shaggy also criticized financial institutions and investors for their hesitance to invest in Dancehall, a fetter that has delayed the genre’s creation of billionaires.
“Some of these financial institutions and investors are slow to think, they are slow to trigger to think that they would come in and be a part of that because they may think that the music is not tangible but it’s very tangible, culture is tangible. There is nothing that is sold without culture,” he said.
“In Hip Hop when we see what Kanye is doing, a lot of that is culture and there is no bigger culture than this culture, so what we want is for financial institutions to stop looking at the music like it’s not tangible. There are catalogues these days…the catalogues itself is tangible. We need a lot more of our financial institutions to get involved in the culture,” he added.
