Reasoning with Sean Paul

LG: Which artists do you get compared to or lumped with the most?

SP: When I first started, Supercat was a mentor of mine and there was a definite link there. People knew that. People also said I sounded like Spragga Benz. The simple fact was that I looked up to these kids. I was the same age as Spragga and Buju. When Buju was bussing Jamaica, I was 19 too.

I was in school at the time and so I looked up to them. Even though we were the same age, you can look up to people around you who are doing positive things. I took the positive that they did, what they showed me that you could do with your life and was like, "I could do that too." It just went from there.

I've been compared to Supercat, Spragga Benz, and that vibe, but same way, people say that they heard me spawn into my own thing. We have to realize that music has been around since the beginning of time as sounds and patterns. Developing your own pattern into what everyone else has already taught you is all that music is.

LG: You're album's release date has been pushed back a number of times. Is some major label going to get on the bandwagon and distribute it?

SP: I'm very happy to say, actually, that last week I signed papers with Atlantic Records.

LG: Congratulations!

SP: Respect! There were a lot of rumors out there about why the album was being held back. I couldn't say anything at the time until it happened, so I'm glad to say I'm going to get some more videos. It's going to happen right now—big vibes!

LG: "Gimme the Light" [on the Buzz rhythm] is your major crossover hit. [It reached #3 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart.]

SP: It's my biggest hit to date.

LG: Why do you think it happened with this one over "Infiltrate," "Deport Them," or some of your other tunes from your first album, "Stage One?"

SP: In many of my other songs I use English words but I mix them more heavily with patois. "Gimme the Light" speaks on behalf of people who are clubbing and it uses club words like "draw," and "Mo‘t" [champagne]. Those words are included in the singing hook and I think they hook people in terms of: they hear it, can sing it back, and can understand what I'm saying.

In "Like Glue," which is my second single coming out, I use words like "trees," which is slang from the hip-hop industry. In the reggae industry, hooking Caribbean kids on hip-hop has been happening for a lot of years, so I say I'm just going to switch it around and use words like "draw," which Jamaicans don't use. We say "ganja." We say "kushumpeng." We say "weed." We say "herb." I just changed it around and said, "Yo, I have to reach out to that demographic of people."

I have another song [entitled "Get Busy,"] on the "Diwali" rhythm that says [sings] "Get busy, just shake that booty nonstop when the beat drops; just keep swinging it, get jiggy." That's straight slang from the United States. I think the language I use is one of the reasons I'm hooking people out there. But dancehall as a whole has gotten so much more clever. Songs have more substance.

LG: More layers?

SP: Yeah, more layers. There are artists out there who are writing songs that are more universal and not so local. I think dancehall is just pressing on in that format. I just happen to be blessed and be the lucky one in this seat right now.

LG: How did you link up with Troyton [Thomas] who co-produced the Buzz rhythm?

SP: Troyton is a Miami-based producer who has been coming to Jamaica for a couple of years. If you check the history, I've done a couple of projects with him, about four songs before this one. None of them were as big as this. None of them really got as much juggling fame as this one. It's just Jah works, fi real! [smiles at his reference to said publication]

LG: Are you based in Miami now?

SP: No, I'm still based in Jamaica, but I've been traveling a lot.

LG: Where in Jamaica are you located?

SP: I'm in Kingston. I live in uptown Kingston, which is St. Andrew. I have to comment on it. When I first came into the biz, everyone hailed me as an uptown deejay. It's unusual that people from uptown gain a lot of success in the biz. I showed love to everybody—I didn't try to snob out anyone. When my career started to take off, people knew me as a kid who was down to earth. I think that has helped me now.

LG: Yes, look at what Damian [Marley] did with his uptown/downtown thing. [Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley released "Halfway Tree," an album named after a neighborhood in Kingston that is seen as a junction between the rich and poor parts of town. It represented his mother's uptown upbringing and his father's ghetto childhood. -Ed.]

SP: Yeah. Damian has a kid in his group, in his whole vibe right now who is a brethren of mine, Daddigan. Daddigan started the whole Dutty Cup Crew with me.  He is on Jr. Gong's album and is trying to do his own album in New York. It's just great to see that. After all these years, music is living on in all my brethren in the Cup, so I still have to big them up.

LG: With your popularity growing, how do you feel about celebrities being role models? Do they have some responsibility to the public?

SP: Yeah, they definitely do! I think kids should have a mentor and a role model, but that they shouldn't take one person's opinion to be what we call final assessment or judgment about how life is supposed to be. A kid would hear me say, "Just gimme the light and pass the draw," and what I want him to get from that is that there are some things you do when you're at a party. That's a whole party song and I hope that kids get that vibe from it. Kids should also learn not only from music, but from TV and books, from school, and from their friends. Be around various people. Don't let your mentor be something that's just one strain of thing.

Music tells you about the artist and what they were thinking about at the time, because the person has to think about it to sing it. I do feel I have a responsibility to the youths. For real.

LG: Do you work with children a lot?

SP: Actually, no. I haven't worked with kids in a long time. I used to swim for Jamaica and played water polo. Sometimes in the summer my coach would have summer camps and I would work with kids at that time.

I do feel that I would like to get involved again with kids in Jamaica from a sports perspective. That's how I see myself giving back to the community. Sports helped me gain a whole positive vibe about myself, a whole "physical-ness" about myself. It gave me discipline and determination. I would like to hold basketball and swimming competitions, and sponsor events where kids can take part and see that sports can pay off in certain times. Sports take your mind off of violence, it expends energy, and allows you to meditate on your own self to move yourself forward.

LG: Yes, they say that when the mind is in synch with the body, everything else falls into place.

SP: Straight.