Orville Richard Burrell was born in Kingston on October 22, 1968. Orville’s adolescence was in New York and since then he already knew he wanted to pursue a music career and to begin with, at age 18 he started his career as a DJ.

In Brooklyn, Shaggy started to get into reggae, achieving his first hit on the dance floor with the song “Big Up”. It was in a sound system, a kind of electric trio without musicians, but with a powerful sound system, which promotes dances through the streets, in Brooklyn that Shaggy learned to loosen his tongue to the sound of dancehall.

At age 20, he enlisted in the US Navy and was sent to Iraq in the Gulf War. While at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, he recorded, in a small New York studio, “Oh Carolina”, dressed in an American uniform. Despite using an original by another artist, the Jamaican musician gives it his personal stamp by introducing new lyrics, working together with producers such as Sting Intl., Don One, Lloyd ‘Spiderman’ Campbell and Robert Livingston. This “modification” of “Oh Carolina” by Shaggy was a great success! This single sold over 600,000 copies and played on numerous radio stations.

The success of “Oh Carolina” did not go unnoticed in the eyes of major Virgin Records, which signed him to a multi-million-dollar contract that includes the recording of the album Pure Pleasure in 1993.

 His big moment, however, was yet to come, with the album Boombastic, and the eponymous single, the subject of a commercial for Levi’s, and Shaggy made one of the most played albums in 1995, earning him his first platinum record, in addition to a Grammy for best reggae album. In 1997 Shaggy released the album Midnite Lover.

Shaggy continues to this day moving his musical career and bringing many memorable hits to reggae.

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