The Nightmare Interview Before Christmas... Shaggy

Gavin Haynes has 100 free minutes but no friends. So each week we're going to make him call a popstar. This week: A special Christmas edition with Shaggy

Shaggy is a man who says his own name in the voice of the Cookie Monster for a living. Everyone’s got to get by somehow. But for Shaggy, the getting-by bit has become gradually less and less feasible. Sadly, sometime around 2002, the general public, ever-fickle, grew tired of listening to a man say his own name in the voice of the Cookie Monster. So Shaggy was cast out of the pop charts into the infernos of public appearances, label struggles and infinite reboots. Of course, his career was always a bit of a heavier-than-air machine, yet even after his unexpected 2000 reboot masterclass Hot Shot, Shaggy had managed to eke a second bite out of the same template on 2002’s Lucky Day.

But then? Four records followed. Can you name any of them? Do you even remember hearing a song from any of them? From the US number 144 peak of Clothes Drop or the Swedish number 95 Intoxication? Did you know he’d made them, or did you, like most consumers, feel that Shaggy was living in some state of suspended animation? That he would only re-animate himself when pop culture conclaves swivelled the spotlight back to him? Well no. He wasn’t sitting on his ass. He was out there. Hustling like crazy to get back into the top-hundred in Belgium. Getting up while you were probably still in bed. Trying and failing, and getting up and dusting himself off again, checking his slowly dwindling bank balance and re-checking MTV News to see whether by chance saying your own name in the voice of the Cookie Monster had become inexplicably popular again.

Which is why, in October of this year, Shaggy found himself once more with an album to promote. After chasing the unholy Dollar down increasingly blind alleys, this was meant to be his classy-reboot. This time, the horns were real not synthesised. The baby-girls were fully grown women with their own diverse range of personal interests. Sly and Robbie were on production duties. Evidently, Shaggy was hoping he could capture the Guardian readers, the Lee Perry-heads, and use their outsize position in the media to turn his reboot into the sort of late-life rediscovery that Bobby Womack, Gil Scott-Heron, or Solomon Burke have all enjoyed. God knows why he then consented to an interview with Noisey. He might’ve known we are not in the business of classy-anything. Though perhaps this said more about the demand for Shaggy interviews than the supply of them. “What do you mean Alexis Petridis hasn’t called back?” “I can’t do miracles, Shaggy.” “Well who’s actually on this list, then?” “Uh… Gigwise. Sound Technician. You And Your Xylophone. Surrey Life… and Noisey.” “What’s a Noisey?” “I dunno, but they seemed very keen for some reason.”

So it was that I was told that as part of a day of interviews for Orvile Richard Burrell’s newrecord, I would be calling Shaggy at 6PM. Shaggy! We could talk about so many things.What it feels like to be famous. What it feels like to not be famous anymore. How he was planning on following-up his 2001 mega-hit "Angel". What had happened to all the songs he had already tried to follow-up his 2001 mega-hit "Angel" with, and which one he thought could’ve been successful in an alternate universe much like the alternate universe we all walked into when the 90s’ Mr Boombastic made his unexpected 2000 comeback. You know: just a general deep-level exploration of the inner-stuff of Shaggy. Psychologically, he was a winkle waiting to be picked, and as those familiarly incomprehensible tones burbled down the line to me, I was more than ready to scoop out his juicy meat. What follows is the sum total of our talk.

Noisey: Hello Shaggy. So you’ve been doing a whole day of interviews, I hear, so what was the best question you’ve been asked all day?

Shaggy: [Shaggy laughs. This is the last time we will hear that sound.] I been asked a whole lot of questions about de album and tings. How’s dat for ya?

Were there any journalists you got along with particularly well?

What do you mean ‘got along’? Ya we had a good chat you know.

Have you spoken to any that were real assholes?

No. Not really.

Can you remember any of their names?

No.

Are you generally good with names?

[At this point, there a small blurred sound of friction. Like someone, say, fumbling for the hang-up button on a mobile phone that is not their own but their PR representative’s. Then, there is silence.]

I tried calling Shaggy back. The first time, I thought it was still just an error. Of course it was. Shaggy had slipped. He’d gotten carried away with an expressive gesture that had come straight from the heart of his outsized comedy-Jamaican personality. The phone rang. And rang. And then went to voicemail. The second time ,someone bounced it to voicemail after a few rings. After that, it was straight-to-voicemail all the time. At 6:15. At 6:30. And on. I tried emailing. “Hey there. Something’s happened?? I can’t get through. Will keep trying!!” No reply. Anyone who has been in an abortive one-sided relationship will know too well this familiar sequence of blocking moves. Yet I was still so deluded I couldn’t even see that there had been anything abusive in my brief relationship with Shaggy.

Sadly, it seemed I would now never be able to listen to 2001 mega-hit "It Wasn’t Me" without tears welling up in my eyes. Now, whenever Rikrok hooked back to the line: “Picture this we were both stark naked banging on the bathroom floor”, the feeling would no longer be one of mild titillation and pants-wetting amusement. It would be one of profound melancholy. A very grown-up sense of the imperfectability of life and the precarious nature of our idols. A man famous for saying his own name in the style of the Cookie Monster had un-personed me. To Shaggy, I might as well have been a hamburger patty with a face crudely stuck on in bacon. As anyone who has been spiritually facepalmed by a 90s novelty hitmaker will know, that’s never a good feeling.

I’d like to say it was water off a duck’s back to me, but it wasn’t. It irked. Shaggy remained incommunicado, but I didn’t want him to hate me. Sometimes I’d be standing at a train station, and catch a glimpse of a face in the crowd, and imagine that it was him, that Shaggy was inexplicably catching the 8:15 via Catford, and in that moment, I wish I could reach out to Shaggy. Tell him that I’m sorry. Tell him that I never meant to hurt him. That I’m not like that cruel Shaggy-satirising radio skit where Jon Culshaw orders a taxi in the voice of Shaggy. Perhaps we could have both realised the errors of our ways, cleared up this misunderstanding, and become something like friends. Not real friends any more thanyou are actually friends with the guy who runs your local cornershop. But you know - that sort of fellow-traveller acknowledgement.

But it was never to be. Given that two months on, my email remains ignored, the voicemails un-replied, I shall have to content myself with a smaller prize. Sure, Shaggy hadn’t been able to remember any of the names of the journalists who had asked him intimate details about his life. The ones who had swotted up on the timeline of his Gulf War service, who knew about his work on the official song of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, who had sought to ingratiate themselves with him with their deferential mid-answer giggles. But maybe he would, at least for a few hours, remember mine. “Are you sure Petridis hasn’t called?” he’d grumble in the voice of a sentient garbage can. “I told you, Shaggy, he’s interviewing Stevie Wonder this week.” “So what are we down to?” “Well, Surrey Life can’t run until next month, the Xylophone people cancelled, so it’s just Gigwise, Mother & Baby, Sputnikmusic, and the Noisey thing you hung up on.” “Noisey?” He’d turn puce. “Fuck that Gavin Haynes cunt.”

Follow Gavin on Twitter: @hurtgavinhaynes

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