Shaggy

The invisible MC at The Point tonight builds us up for the forthcoming appearance of Mr. Luvva-Luvva, smooth just like a’silk, Shag-gy, in a let’s get ready to rumble style-ee.

His backing band and dancing girls form the advance guard on the stage. His-Shagginess joins them with a flash of pyrotechnics and the show is underway.

For anyone that spent most of the last decade doing a ten-stretch on account of some bungled bank job or over-indulging their passion for chen-style tai chi during the prime-time pop hour let me give you the rough guide to Shaggy. ‘They’ call him Mr. Boombastic and his particular style of reggae is more akin to Jamaican dancehall otherwise known as Ragga. He mixes this with catchy pop melodies, anti-drink driving campaign jingles and the vocal equivalent of an intermittent hedge-trimmer, mzzzzmmm.

His radio friendly brand of dancehall is a far cry from the true champions of ‘guntalk’ and ‘slackness’ such as Beenie Man and Bounty Killer and tonight’s dancehall is watered down for teatime and the guntalk has become iced-bun talk.

Shaggy calls his style ‘dog-a-muffin’, which I would have thought was a criminal offence. Happily nobody is subjected to this tonight and we all return home safely, albeit completely Shagged-out.