SEAN PAUL 

Sean Paul's hot single, "Gimme the Light" is burning up everywhere, including the US and the UK. The video has been gaining strong support at US music video channels such as BET and MTV. "Gimme the Light" recently topped the New York Reggae charts for extended weeks. It also scored high on the More Fire Top 10 Reggae chart as well as the Reggae Vibes Top 10. Over on the Billboard charts, it has shown up on the Rap Singles and R&B charts. But its biggest success has, so far, been on the Hot 100 chart, where it rose to a new peak of No. 74 this week, up from No.88 the week before.

 Sean Paul, busted out on the dancehall scene since 1997, has made quite a name for himself in a short period of time. Original from the start, he is, no doubt, one of the wickedest dancehall artistes today. His name is his own. At age 24, he is not completely new to the dancehall scene as we may think. Since the early 1990's, Sean Paul has been writing lyrics for tunes, some of which we now hear today.

"The words I use in "Gimme the Light", we don't usually use those terms in Jamaica... 'Gimme the light, pass the dro,' " he said of his surprise hit "Gimme the Light" and its stimulant-friendly lyrics.

"I did it so American heads can pick up on it. It's a party song. I'm glad people take that in that context. I'm not telling kids to go do this." Sean Paul's ‘Gimme the Light’ song and video are also getting heavy rotation and has attracted huge attention to him. Sean's song was released on September 9, and has managed to enter the US national chart at number 33.

Posters and pictures of Sean are everywhere, he's in every magazine on the shelf and his video is as popular in the UK as it is in the US. The 12" version of Gimme the Light also has his piece on the Buy Out rhythm on the flip side.

Though his career right now is music, Sean Paul is an educated man. Born to a Portuguese-Jamaican father and a Chinese-Jamaican mother, Sean Paul Henriques grew up known to his friends as the copper-colour ‘Chiney bwoy’…..excelling in sports in his teen years.

He played water polo for the Jamaica National team as well as representing his country in swimming in the 1989 and 1991 Carifta Games. However, his love for the arts was fostered at an earlier age by his mother, a well noted Jamaican painter.

"When I was 13 years old, my mother got me this little $30-keyboard. I remember thinking that this was all I needed to make dancehall rhythms!" As a youth in Kingston, it was music that filtered in from the US that would be one of Paul's greatest life influences.

"I'm a big hip-hop fan since being a kid," he said. "It was the first music that spoke to me and made me feel like 'yeah!’ They were expressing something like how I would express myself, in hip-hop music and dancehall music. Hip-hop and dancehall brought me more into other kinds of music. My flow follows sometimes what's going on in the hip-hop industry even though I'm speaking Jamaican patois."

Paul's aspiration to follow in the paw prints of rap/reggae hybrid expert Supercat would not come to fruition for a few more years….he had to get the blessings of his mother first. "I had studied hotel management. For three years I did everything from cooking and cleaning to learning the business inside and out. What came out of that experience was my cooking. I don't really love to cook, but ladies love to hear that I can. And I begged my mama," Paul remembered. "I had them buy me a keyboard, and that's where my whole music genesis came from."

But even with the equipment supplied by his parents, Paul still had to convince his mom that the money he was bringing in as a chef and a bank teller would be nothing compared to his dream profession as DJ extraordinaire (not to be confused with a DJ in the US — dancehall DJs rock the mic like hip-hop MCs.) "I said to her, this is what I want to do," said Paul. "let me try to do this. Give me a year after school."

He didn't even need that long. His first try at putting out a song, "Baby Girl," became a radio hit in Jamaica. Two years later he started to flood the Caribbean with smashes like "Infiltrate" and "Deport Them," both of which made it onto his U.S. debut, Stage One (2000).

"By the time my first album was out, I had been out in Jamaican three or four years, but I had hits out at that time that were bona fide hits," Paul explained. "Coming out with my first album, I didn't want these songs to be left out, so I included them." With the U.S. market being difficult for many reggae artistes to break through, Stage One suffered from meager sales, even though "Deport Them" became a club staple.

Paul, who can be caught on upcoming albums by Mya and Beenie Man as well as the Clipse's remix to "Grindin'," said he has studied and found the perfect formula for his follow-up, Dutty Rock.

"This album, I'm trying to show growth where my music is spread out to more than just the dancehall rhythms," he said. "Sometimes in the biz, there's a lot of kids that do stuff the same ways. Sometimes you have to do things different from that mainstream and just make your music the way it feels. A lot of people in Jamaica won't use the words I did in 'Gimme the Light'. But it's not only my lyrics, it's the way I say it.

"I been doing some different things," he continued. "Doing some of my songs in Spanish. I don't really speak Spanish, but I was taught by this dude from Cuba. I'm trying to stick out in different ways." Dutty Rock's ‘Punkie’ finds the rude boy flexing his bilingual linguistics, while waiting on a girl's love. The Neptunes-produced "Bubble" shows Paul lusting for loins."

"Bubble is basically another party song," he explained. "I'm talking to a girl. In Jamaica, when you say 'bubble' you're talking about a girl, how her shape is nice and round. Girl, give me your bubble."

Besides the Neptunes, Tony Touch and Roots affiliate Rahzel also collaborated with Paul on the LP. The co-stars Paul holds closet to his heart, however, are members of his Dutty Cup Crew, who are all basically ‘doing their own thing’ now. "Dutty Cup Crew is a crew I’ve been firing with from 1995," he said, explaining the album's title. "Dutty yeah means 'Yaaayyy, we in the house. Sean Paul and the crew is in here.' At first we were telling people it meant we work hard. How you may say, ‘That's dirty, we work hard at what we do.’ Dutty is also a chalice pipe. We graduated from that kind of vibe, but we shout out to each other."