Shropshire Star

Sean Paul talks ahead of Birmingham show

Global superstar and Grammy-award winning dancehall and reggae legend Sean Paul will make his Arena Birmingham debut on Wednesday.

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Sean Paul’s heads to Birmingham

He will perform in his very first arena concert in the city as part of a major tour.

Sean continues to be hugely successful, popular and globally recognised influencing and collaborating with artists from virtually all genres of music.

The global chart topper has featured charts around the world with Gimme the Light, Like Glue, Get Busy, Got 2 Luv U (ft Alexis Jordan), She Doesn’t Mind, Breathe, Temperature together with more recent tracks such as No Lie (ft. Dua Lipa); Tek Weh Yuh Heart (ft, Tory Lanez); Sia’s Cheap Thrills and Clean Bandit’s smash Rockabye. Though he’s been at the top of his game for about 20 years, he remembers what things were like when he finally broke through.

“It was a whirlwind. It was a whirlwind from 1996 for me. Because for the first year or so I didn’t really have a manager. I did a song in Jamaica and I started to receive calls, asking me to come to this and that and people were asking to come and record with me. It felt hectic, then it smoothed out, then it went international and everything broke out.

“I’ve been to 120 countries and it’s all a blur. I remember certain events but sometimes there are stories that people tell me and I’m like ‘really, that happened there?’”

The music industry has changed radically during Sean’s two decades in it.

Back in the 1990s, he sold huge volumes of CDs – but now things are dominated by social media and streaming.

“I didn’t have an online presence at the beginning but by the time I came into the business it was definitely computer-generated rhythms and also it was changing in front of our eyes.

I had no social media but I used to send files online back and forth – that’s how I did the Beyoncé song Baby Boy.

It’s a lot different now, and I’d say there’s pros and cons to it – a pro is someone who doesn’t have any material or any links with industry they can just put whatever it is out there and start collecting followers – there’s no middleman.

“But a con is you can get lost – I’ve seen big artists who joined late . . . me being one of them.

“I didn’t like Twitter at first, I was like nah I don’t want to tell people I’m in the loo. Then I started to get into it.”

l Tickets are still available for Sean Paul from www.arenabham.co.uk