A New Love for Reggae

Like any other veteran of Jamaica’s dance halls, singer Shaggy knows the challenging legacy of Bob Marley. The late reggae icon shone so brightly that his music still dominates and defines the genre 20 years after his death, leaving would-be successors in an artistic and commercial shadow.

“For the record companies looking around, where reggae is concerned, there are no success stories today,” says Shaggy, the headliner on Sunday’s second day of the Bob Marley Day Festival in Long Beach. “There is no success story except Bob Marley.”

Ah, but there’s a new success story hailing from the reggae world, and Shaggy is it. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that Shaggy may be the new great hope of reggae.

The 32-year-old singer with the distinctive baritone and Jamaican patois has the surprise hit of early 2001: His fourth album, “Hotshot,” sits at No. 1 on the U.S. sales chart andhas sold 3 million copies since its release in August, thanks in large part to the sexually sly hit “It Wasn’t Me.”

Shaggy is hardly a disciple of the reggae roots community: He has neither dreadlocks nor any dread of offending Marley-minded purists. His music is a buoyant party mix of U.S. pop styles and samples that is more reggae-pop than it is pop-reggae.

“My thing is to get people out of the stigma of what a reggae artist should be like,” said Shaggy, whose real name is Orville Richard Burrell. “No, I don’t have dreads. No, I don’t smoke weed. And no, I don’t make the same kind of music as Bob Marley. But at the end of the day, I’m a reggae artist. . . . No disrespect: Bob Marley was a genius. But the difference between him and Shaggy is night and day.”

Shaggy sneaked up on the international scene in 1993 when his infectious “Oh Carolina”--a reworking of a ska standard with a sample of the “Peter Gunn” theme tossed in--hit No. 1 in England and became a radio hit in the States.

Virgin Records then signed him to a deal purported to be the most lucrative ever for a reggae star. That remarkable moment punctuated a strange odyssey for a young man who had spent his childhood in Jamaica, moved to Brooklyn at 18 and then served a stint in the U.S. Marines that put him in active, front-line duty in the Gulf War.

After his third album with Virgin, Shaggy was frustrated and felt that he was being treated like a novelty act and not a career artist. His album sales were sagging and, despite some prominent contributions to film soundtracks and a 1996 Grammy for best reggae album, it wasn’t clear exactly in which direction Shaggy’s career was headed.

Then he moved to MCA Records and found a quick-hit fuse in “It Wasn’t Me” to light a new career explosion. The song, featuring rapper Ricardo “Rikrok” Ducent, has helped the album climb from No. 87 in its debut week to the top of the list.

“All I really wanted was to sell over a million copies,” Shaggy said. “Did I expect this? No. I don’t think anyone did. I think the reason is I’ve found a way to bridge the gap to reggae. You can’t just take this music from Jamaica and drop it in people’s lap and expect them to eat it up. You have to meet them halfway, so I blended. All I’m doing is fusion and keeping that reggae element in there.”

The reggae element will probably play strong on Sunday, when Shaggy performs at what is billed as the largest reggae festival outside of Jamaica. Among the Long Beach events is a continuing Queen Mary exhibit on Marley’s life featuring items from the archives of reggae historian and author Roger Steffens, a longtime confidant of the Marley family.

Steffens agrees that Shaggy and a host of other reggae stars have to contend with the late star’s legacy, and he notes that “Legend,” a collection of Marley hits, finishes each year as the genre’s best-selling album.

“Marley set the bar too high,” Steffens said. “It was so exquisite and ethereal and timeless that everybody else just falls under his shadow and nobody else has been able to even attempt to reach those heights in 20 years. . . . [Shaggy’s] success is amazing. I think Jamaicans want to recognize him as one of their own. I don’t think he’s looked on as a roots artist.”

Will Shaggy’s “Hotshot” edge “Legend” this year? Mathematically, it’s all but certain (“Legend” typically sells about 650,000 copies a year), but it also depends on whether you classify “Hotshot” as a reggae release.

Steffens, chair of the Grammy reggae screening committee, points out that “Hotshot” was submitted by MCA Records for consideration in pop music categories but not in the reggae field. That observation is confirmed by a copy of the official entry list mailed to voting members of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

“They don’t even think of him as a reggae artist at the label; they don’t want him relegated to that reggae ghetto,” Steffens says. He adds, however, that the “Hotshot” success will still create some new heat around reggae in the music industry, perhaps opening doors of opportunity for other artists from the dance halls.

As Shaggy’s manager, Robert Livingston has heard grumblings among reggae purists about some of Shaggy’s directions, but he says the mushrooming availability of U.S. programming via cable television in Jamaica in the last five years has created a greater affinity in the general populace for American pop; young people are wearing hip-hop fashions and dance halls are spinning New York grooves. The new-look hybrid of pop and reggae was inevitable anyway, Livingston says.

“If somebody from Jamaica doesn’t make this music, the rappers will,” Livingston said. “They already have used the drum beats that are reggae.”

The chorus of purists has softened in tone since the album has achieved major commercial success, and Shaggy says even the harshest critics now sing a different song about his pop leanings.

“I find them very forgiving actually, funny enough,” the singer says. “I’ve seen the harshest of reggae purists come give me my props because I’ve been at it for so long. . . . They’ve seen me come from the hardest of hard-core dancehall to where I am, and they’ve heard my music change through the years. Some might not agree, but they respect. And this music is shedding a light on reggae music which had been forgotten.”

Shaggy paused for a moment when asked about his place in the reggae world and how his pop hybrid will fit in with the genre’s traditional beat. To answer, he rattled off a list of his reggae heroes: Marley, Sly & Robbie, Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown.

“I cannot do the same type of music as them and do it better than them because they are gurus,” he says, drawing out the last word as if it were a key lyric. “I have to do it my way and make my mark. You don’t create legends out of other legends. And people should stop looking for that.”

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* Bob Marley Day Festival, today and Sunday at the Long Beach Arena, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, 1 p.m. $30 and $40. (323) 296-0081.