One might think that making fun of a drill instructor would lead to a severely shortened life span, but for reggae rapper, songwriter and erstwhile Marine Corps artilleryman Shaggy, it led to a career in the music industry.
Long before he ever considered joining the Marines, Shaggy (born Orville Richard Burrell) was a young kid being raised by his grandmother in Jamaica, who had eclectic musical tastes. Listening to the radio and playing with her records was young Shaggy’s earliest forays into his love for music, and it was during a performance by Jamaican dance-hall DJ King Yellowman that he decided he would become a performer himself.
When he finally broke into the music industry with “Oh Carolina” at 25 years old in 1993, Shaggy had developed a signature voice and style — one he perfected not from his records and dance-hall performances but while serving in the Marines, as he recalled in a recent video posted to social media juggernaut TikTok.
“I got this voice by mocking drill instructors in the military,” he recalled in a video posted last week. “‘Cause in the Marines, the drill instructors would go, ‘Yeah, boy, drop and give it 20; let’s go, boy’ and I would mock him as a form of joking because it motivated, you know, your platoon.
“I just sang that song in that voice because it sounded cool, and all of a sudden, ‘Oh Carolina’ blew up, and I’m faced with this situation that I’m going to have to sing every song like…
