VIBE Magazine: Sean Paul - Uptown Top Ranking

Though most of the ragga records that rotate in New York clubs are time-tested classics, Jamaican cuts seem to have a harder time making the urban-radio jump from Bobby Konders's Sunday-night copper-shot reggae segment to Funkmaster Flex's platinum-and-ice hit parade on the other nights of the week on N.Y.C.'s Hot 97. Right now, the biggest exception to that rule is the soft-spoken 29-year-old whose jaunty black Kangol and crisp Ecko sweat suit are rapidly disappearing behind a thick cloud of smoke.

Back in 1997, Sean Paul crept into millions of ear holes with the aptly titled "Infiltrate," the song that every DJ mixed after Beenie Man's monster hit "Who Am I?" (aka "Sim Simma"). Both records were produced by Sean's bald and burly manager, Jeremy Harding, whose little home studio in Kingston has since become a musical powerhouse. Two years later, Sean's song "Deport Them" started crackling over Stateside airwaves at the same time as his blazing duet with Mr. Vegas, "Hot Gal Today." Without the benefit of big corporate promotion, Sean became the first reggae artist ever to have two records simultaneously in all-day rotation from Miami to Los Angeles. Stage One, Sean's debut album for VP Records, moved six figures, becoming one of the independent label's biggest sellers of 2000. "It's kinda scary to realize that people are looking at us among the ones who are steering the music now," Harding says.

Since Stage One, Sean has continued to drop 45s on the Jamaican underground, and his ganja-and-girls anthem "Gimme the Light" (produced by Miami-based Troyton) has tonight's crowd sweating in anticipation. They've seen the fly video directed by Little X. They've heard Sean blazing the reggae remix for "Grindin'," by the Clipse, as well as his latest single "Like Glue," produced by Tony Kelly. And they're fiending for a taste from his powerful sophomore album Dutty Rock (featuring production by the Neptunes and guest appearances by Tony Touch and Rahzel), due out this fall.

Matteo, the promoter with the big belly and the Gucci hat, is starting to look agitated. Must be show time.

When Sean Paul Henriques was a kid growing up in the manicured, uptown King-ston neighborhood of Norbrook, a career in dancehall was the furthest thing from his mind. His mother, a well-known Jamaican still-life painter, signed him up for piano lessons, but he never mastered the instrument. His parents were champion swimmers, and he, too, joined the Jamaican national team, harboring dreams of winning Olympic gold in the breaststroke or in water polo. His aquatic ambitions fizzled out, though. "It just got a bit monotonous practicing for water polo every day when there would only be, like, 30 people at the matches," he says.

Yet Sean Paul's journey from a life of privilege to Jamaican dancehall isn't hard to understand when you get to know his family. His dad survived the crash of an ill-fated ganja airlift headed for Florida in the early '80s. His aunt was involved with Sparkles Disco, an uptown sound system. She encouraged Sean to come to a few of their dances when he was in high school. "Just come help lift some boxes," she told him.

Sparkles played a lot of soca, but Sean was partial to the dancehall beat that originated in the ghettos of downtown and western Kingston. "I was about the same age as Buju and Beenie Man and [Bounty] Killer an' dem," he recalls. "Dem youth was running the place when they was 16 and 17. But I was still this uptown kid, looking on them all, like, Damn. They give me an inspiration, too. I can't front 'pon that. Them youth is my age, but I look up to them for real."

His favorite artist of all is Super Cat. "He is like," Sean pauses, searching for the right words. "Cat is like the father to me. I always felt his voice and his tunes was just stuck in my head every day." Timeless songs like "Boops," "Mud Up," and "Cry Fi the Youth" inspired young Sean to pick up the microphone. "That's where this whole feeling comes from," he says.

His classmate Don Yute was throwing parties and chatting on the mike, and together they began honing their skills, making tapes at home, blowing up private sessions. Then by chance, Sean met Super Cat's former manager, Robert Livingston (who now manages Shaggy's career). "The first tune I ever recorded was called 'Ghetto Story'," Sean recalls. "I was 17 or 18. I had a lot of emotion in me about the suffering of poor people and how the country was getting so violent. When you have power, sometimes you feel like you can crush a couple ants, and it's all good, 'cause it's just ants. But it's human beings' lives. It's people, yo."

Livingston was impressed enough to release "Ghetto Story" on 45, and it got a few spins on the island's Irie FM. But when Sean approached other producers, they were skeptical. "They said, 'Try a girl's tune.'" Around that time, he went to Harding's studio, and there he began to voice the melodic, rude-bwoy love songs that made him famous.

"Dancehall is a funny business," says producer Computer Paul. "It's always been a poor people's music. So if you're too good-looking or too light skinned, or even if you're too talented, people are gonna hate you." Sean, who is a mix of black, Chinese, English, and Portuguese, fits all these bills and has felt the need to work twice as hard as the next guy to maintain his status in the fickle ragga underground. "There's 'nuff times where you feel like people in your country don't really appreciate what you're doing," he says.

Bounty Killer, the notorious Warlord who grew up in the depths of the Kingston ghetto and has never backed down from a battle throughout his 10-year career, recorded a duet with someone named "Twin of Twin" called "Uptown Boy" that takes a swipe at Sean. Though Killer does not mention Sean Paul on the record, Twin of Twin does, saying that Sean is "afraid of dancehall." Sean Paul decided to take the high road and let the attack slide. He even showed up at Bounty Killer's platinum party in Jamaica to big up his fellow DJ. Still the nasty little dig made public the sort of hating that's gone on in private for years. No matter how dope Sean's latest verse may be, to some people he will always be that soft "light-skinned boy" from uptown.

"Sean used to be a little sensitive to those comments," says Murray Elias, A&R; director at VP, who's been around the reggae business for years. "But he's moving beyond that now. With Sean's skills, his style of delivery, his ability to write songs with hooks-he's hitting the notes that the hip hop audience first liked about reggae when they discovered it 10 years ago." Though he may never be the ruling artist in dancehall, Sean has his finger on the G-spot of the American market that has eluded so many of his peers-and many of those who dog him would love to be where he is right now.

Thanks to this enviable position, Sean Paul finds himself inside the Neptunes' Virginia Beach sound lab two weeks after the Speeed gig. He is hard at work on "Bubble," a song for Dutty Rock, featuring vocals by fellow Jamaican Fahrenheit. After some arm-twisting, penny-wise VP had finally agreed to pay a greatly reduced price for a track from hip hop's reigning hit makers, who were eager to work with the label's rising star. "When I met Sean, I just liked his vibe," says Pharrell Williams. "I like the shit that he says on records. That's what I like about dancehall artists; they refer to themselves and their characters with biblical strength. In that tropical world, them niggas think about all kinds of shit."

Inside the smoky vocal booth, headphones are clamped on Sean's skull as the beat from "Grindin'" shatters his brain cells. "Those who try to test, you better know how / Get flat, yo," he warns unseen adversaries. "Please don't come inna me way when me squeeze / Shot can be heard from the West Indies / Smell the gunpowder inna Jamaican breeze."

He's been over these lines time and again, getting each cadence exactly right. Sean is a studio perfectionist, the most consistently on-point recording artist in dancehall reggae today. "I want people to look back in history," says Sean, "and say 'That kid was there.' For real."

Back at Speeed, Mister Cee, the legendary Brooklyn DJ who discovered Biggie Smalls, has the downstairs dance floor bouncing. But he steps aside to let Jeremy Harding place a 10-inch dubplate on the turntable. King Jammy's immortal "Sleng Teng" riddim assaults the crowd, and Sean unleashes a fast stream of syllables in a buzz-saw monotone.

"Now in comes a duttily muckily musical sound." He begins, stepping into the spotlight. Girls scream. Lighters flash. Spragga prowls backstage with a cordless mike, tossing in harmonies and doubling punch lines in support of his musical brethren. Then Jeremy mixes in another riddim. It's time for the big tune. "Just gimme the light and pass the 'dro-oh-oh." They're bouncing off the ceiling now. Sean Paul is shining.