Shaggy

With a voice like a power saw and a raw, ripping style to match, Shaggy made reggae history, breaking worldwide to become the biggest-selling dancehall artist ever. His unforgettable introduction to the world was “Oh Carolina,” a stripped-down, sexed-up 1993 reinvention of the Folkes Brothers’ 1960 mento track that we still can’t get out of our heads. He soon showed his range — and his massive crossover power — by scaling the pop charts with his dancehall makeover of Mungo Jerry’s hippie-era jug-band pop jam “In the Summertime.” Shaggy went all the way to #1 with Maxi Priest on the slinky, swinging “That Girl,” running his razor-sharp rhymes over a smoldering sample of the Booker T. & the M.G.’s’ burner “Green Onions.”

In Next Steps, Shaggy’s rhymes reach new heights with a little help from his friends.

When you’ve got a sound as big and brash as Shaggy’s you’re not afraid to mix it up with other artists, with some bold, boundary-breaking results. Shaggy served up the unusually sweet love song “Bonafide Girl” with some help from Rik Rok, Tony Gold, and an old-school rock-steady groove. On the opposite end of the romantic spectrum, he offered up an ode to a “Freaky Girl” alongside R&B duo The Kraft, bobbing and weaving around a slippery, funkified bassline. And young Chinese-Jamaican siren Tessanne Chin slipped some sexy purring in between Shaggy’s quick-tongued rhymes when they paired up on “Never Let Me Go.”

Shaggy shines on rock ’n’ roll reinventions and topical teardowns in Deep Cuts.

If all you know of Shaggy is the big, blockbuster hits, you’ve got some surprises in store. Somewhere between growing up in Jamaica and immigrating to Brooklyn, he must have developed a little Latin love, judging by the bilingual back-and-forth between him and Rik Rok on “Chica Bonita.” With a little help from dancehall queen Lady Saw, Shaggy shows yet another side by swaggering through a revved-up remake of Mickey & Sylvia’s ’50s rock & roll classic “Love Is Strange.” And let it never be said that Shaggy isn’t topical — he minces no words in his raw-as-ever response to the economic crisis on “Fired Up (F*ck the Rece$$ion!).”

When Shaggy burst onto the scene in the ’90s with his rough-and-ready style, he changed the game for dancehall reggae, pushing it to the forefront of mainstream pop and introducing elements of old-school Jamaican folk music with his first hit, “Oh Carolina.” For Shaggy, dancehall was made to be mixed with other musical flavors from all across the menu — R&B, rock-steady, rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, you name it, he’s rhymed over it. But he hasn’t done it alone — everyone from Akon to Sean Paul has helped Shaggy shake things up. And now we’ve piled his hits high for a big Shaggy blowout that gives you a front-row seat for the dancehall hero’s reggae revolution.