Shaggy

Shaggy talks new album of Frank Sinatra covers, competing on The Masked Singer and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're on with Mario Lopez. Ra Mario Lopez joining me
on Zoom. Two time Grammy winning artists Shaggy, Welcome to
the show man, How you been What up Mario? Hey,
you're looking good, player, And I like the room you're in.
You're you're in there in the lab. I'm assuming just
just lame down tracks. Yeah, man, I'm doing I'm actually

(00:21):
in here all week, um doing some new Spice material.
I'm working on some new music for her and uh,
you know, along with a bunch of other stuff. Congratulations, man,
look at you. You you're jamaking. You got like fifty
million jobs trying then try and trying to try and
hustle keep my head above water right there. Hey, you
were just revealed on the mass singer the Space Bunny. Um,

(00:44):
what made you want to go on the show? And
you know what, I turned this down a couple of times. Man,
you know, I was like, yeah, if this was for
me and whatnot. But me, I spoke to Neo and
then you know, he was telling me he did the
one in the UK and he was like, Yo, it
was real fun and blah blah blah. So I was like,
all right, and I looked at the past, and I
was a bunch of my friends, you know, I made
songs with Nicole, you know, Nichol was in Jamaica at

(01:05):
my house. I just came off Kim Show. You know,
Robin and I have a great relationship from for a
long time now, so I was okay, it could be good,
great platform entertaining show. It wasn't really much downside and
until I put the costume on and I was like, heavy, man, yes,

(01:25):
how much did that hinder you? Yo? Bro? It was
really really rough because uh, on paper, it looks really cute,
you know, because the eyes go left, them right, and
you know, and and the airs pop up. So those
are like wild factors. I think those will go over
well with the audience. But you know, when I saw
it was like really huge I put. I was like, man,
there's some weight to this thing, you know, running around

(01:45):
with it. And then there's no visibility, you know what
I mean. So I learn I have to learn the
songs second nature because I couldn't read the telepropter for lyric,
you know, and then it boiled down to the camera
camera blocking. You can't see the cameras are, so I
had to do it by choreography, which is like steps
to know where to be, where to turn for what

(02:06):
camera went to be in front of the panel, And
so I'm doing all of that. Then I have this
harness on that's holding the head up, that is pressing
my chest down, so I can't take the right amount
of breath to hit these notes to make sure I'm
on key. Oh dude, it was a lot going on, man,
And then you had to disguise your Mr. Boombastic voice
for the judges. What was it singing in? Uh? In

(02:26):
a different tone? You know what I'm It's not hard
to get out of the persona of the shaggy you know.
I mean to be like, because I'm speaking to you,
it was just my regular voice right now. I could
be like, right, no, Mario, you have no ye about
what if I work and you're calling like I jump?
Or I could speak to you clear in the same
thing with the singing voice. I couldn't singing that that

(02:49):
tone of voice. I singing the other one. Uh, And
the other one is not as identifiable. So I just
kind of chose songs. But but even though the song choices,
I chose songs that were Abbian songs. I like the
song choices you went, Harry Belafonte, Lionel, Richie, Culture Club,
even Heavy D, the Overweight Lover. I like your those

(03:09):
are colectic song choices, man, I like all those guys. Yeah,
but those are all Caribbean style, like you know, uh,
jump in the line, Harry Belafonte, He's Jamaican. You know.
By the way, we have a we have a single
of that coming out tonight. We we did. We did
a real a read a new version of it coming
out tonight. We did also I did you know with

(03:32):
a Heavy D another Jamaican you know, all night long,
Caribbean song, um, culture club, reggae record. Those are all
clues of what it is. So I think they got it.
That was a Caribbean guy on it. There, it's just
who And I think Robin think was onto me from
early but he he just needed a lot more, I think,
a lot more clues to really be like, oh yeah,

(03:52):
that is shack. Yeah, we'll speaking of music coming out
on new album come Fly with Me. I love the
with Me part. It is uh, of course a Sinatra
song sung in a reggae style. Um, where the idea
comes from? That's mine? Yeah, you know sting and I.
When we get together, man, we compan these really crazy
ideas because we're both allergic to boredom. And I love

(04:14):
that friendship. By the way, yeah, now that's my brother. Man,
it's a brother I didn't know I needed. And you know,
we're on tour, doing four or eights of a six tour,
and and we had a day off. We're on the boat.
You know, I started playing some Sinatra and singing it,
and he was an award. He popped to set up.
He's like, yo, Shaggy, that's your key. Oh my god,
you sound just like Sinatra. And I kept singing and

(04:36):
it was like, wow, we should do a couple of
these in reggae. And the idea just sated on for
about three years. We never did anything to recently, when
he was doing his Vegas run, I was there with him,
and you know, we started playing a couple of those
songs backstages, like, man, you sound so good doing these.
We should what are you doing on the top of
the ear? Let's let's let's do a couple of these.
And he said, I'm coming with your house and we start.
He came over to my house and I had a

(04:57):
couple of musicians over and we started. We had up
staying there for about two weeks and not gonna knocking
most of it out. Flew to Jamaica, put the horn
section background with the guitars, going over to uh you
know l A. Went to the Capital Studio where Frank
did his original material and knock a couple of songs
out over there, and you know, it's ten songs from
the these Sinatra song book done in reggae. Finally, Mario,

(05:20):
you could smoke weed to Sinatra songs. Um it's it's
produced by saying, by sting and it comes out on
the that's awesome in the titles come Fly with Me,
which is you know, come fly with Me, Come Fly
with Me. You know, I was in Turks and Kickos

(05:41):
recently for a while. I was actually there a couple
of times and for a great place. I love how
they'll take any song, any song you can think of,
and they like reggae it out because I was everywhere
you go, every song you can think of his reggae
out and it makes it so much fun and it's
so cool. Yeah, So it's great. Back in the days earlier,
in the earlier days, some of the earlier um reggae

(06:04):
artists whose you know, like John Hold, they take old
country songs and m soul songs and actually put them
in reggae and there were big hits, you know. So
it's it's it's something that's been going on for years.
Was what Staying and I are doing is just a
new version of that. You mentioned. UM touring, So are
you getting into live shows? Already hitting the road this time? Oh? Yeah, Um,

(06:25):
I was in Memphis, UM this weekend, this past weekend,
I was there with me and uh uh money Bag
you and Little Wayne and a whole bunch of us.
I am this weekend, I'm in Tampa. I'm doing around
six weeks in the UK in Europe starting in June.
So yeah, I'm starting to go back out there. And
you know, we have actually on the twenty six, we

(06:47):
have a one night only event of me singing Sinatra
songs with me and Staying at the Blue Note in
New York. So that's fun. Oh that's fun. Now, well,
congrats on that. In the new music Buddy Listen, you
can pre order Come Fly with Me, which drops May five. Shaggy,
thanks so much for checking in. All right, Mario, I'll
good to see you my brother, to say brother, have fun,

(07:10):
thank you with Mario Little Pez