Shaggy At the Air Canada Centre In Toronto on Saturday
Regardless of what else was going on in the world -- and Shaggy himself admitted the attacks on the U.S. had "messed up our whole vibe" -- Saturday night was a night to get freaky.
Mr. Loverman had come to town, promising what the announcer on the prerecorded intro called a "reggae-music explosion." It was an unfortunate choice of words, but at least no one has ever been injured by reggae music.
As he came on-stage at the Air Canada Centre after a short but funky set by Toronto rapper Kardinal Offishall, Shaggy's mission was clear -- to cause booties to shake and to answer the question, "Where the party at?"
Such frivolity was much appreciated by the lively audience. The age range of those in attendance -- everyone from parents with little kids to teens and grownups in their best Saturday-night finery -- indicated Shaggy's wide appeal.
The 32-year-old performer -- aka Orville Richard Burrell, born in Kingston, Jamaica, and raised in Brooklyn -- had several hits in the 1990s but didn't become a superstar until his album Hotshot conquered the charts late last year.
With more than 10 million copies sold, it's reputed to be the biggest-selling disc in the world this year. Hits such as It Wasn't Me, Angel and Freaky Girl showcased Shaggy's absurdly gruff baritone voice and his self-mocking loverman shtick.
On Saturday night, Shaggy's bare-bones concert was hardly a production on the scale of recent Madonna or 'N Sync tours. There were no elaborate sets, only a banner with "Shaggy" written in silver alongside some crudely painted stars. The pyrotechnics -- big sparklers, a few flashpots -- were strictly bush-league.
This lack of on-stage frills forced Shaggy to rely on his charms as a performer, as well as graciously surrender the stage to his many cohorts, which included four backup singers and three dancers.
The four musicians ably combined a foundation of reggae rhythms with the slickness of modern American pop and R&B. Little of it was unfamiliar.
While the versions of Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime and the ska classic Oh Carolina were covers that had been (as the singer says) "Shaggy-tized," nicking riffs and melodies from other songs has long been a tradition in reggae. Bits and pieces of the Jacksons' Shake Your Body, Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On and -- in Shaggy's hit Angel -- both Juice Newton's Angel of the Morning and the Steve Miller Band's The Joker also found their way into songs.
Nevertheless, the music was delivered in such a spirit of fun that it was impossible to resist, and Shaggy's lascivious banter was often hilarious. He interrupted It Wasn't Me -- a duet in which he instructs singer Ricardo "RikRok" Ducent how to talk his way out of getting caught cheating on his lady -- to tell him to "lock the damn bathroom door" next time he wants to get some action in there. Before a steamy ballad, Shaggy told the crowd he didn't want to be alone with his pillow that night and promised to "fog up your windows."
But he was sincere on the subject of the terrorist attacks. Before becoming a reggae star, he served in the Gulf War as a U.S. marine, and as he introduced the encore of All We Need is Love, he pleaded that despite the pain and suffering people are going through, "the answer ain't war -- the answer is love."
Many in the audience replied with a traditional gesture of sympathy by holding up their lighters.