With Reviews ranging from ‘Incredible’ to ‘Informative’, to ‘the best music conference I’ve ever attended’, IMC 2024 is being hailed as successful, impactful and the best of its kind in the region and beyond. The Island Music Conference’s key objectives of being a facilitator, and gathering point to engage with artistes & Global industry practitioners, address pivotal questions that can significantly influence their careers, and ultimately propel Jamaica and the Caribbean’s entertainment sector forward as a cohesive unit, continued to be met in its sophomore staging.
The recently concluded conference, held in Kingston, Jamaica from February 21st thru 25th, featured an impressive line-up of influential figures, including WyClef Jean, Kes, StoneBwoy, Shaggy, Sean Paul, Spice, Teejay, Masicka and Jesse Royal.
Sirius Xm’s Alex Tear, Audiomack’s Brian Zisook, Meta’s Brittany Johnson, Youtube’s Tuma Basa, S-Curve’s Steve Greenburg, Warner Records’ Steve Carless, United Masters’ David Melhado, Amazon’s Madeline Nelson, Grammy’s Len Brown and Ranch Entertainment’s Costi were just a few of the prominent music executives and practitioners who unravelled and provided insights into a slew of crucial global music topics, among them, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the music industry, the nuances of publicity, branding strategies, artiste management, digital music marketing and effective money management.
The five-day event was attended by over a dozen countries to include Guadeloupe, Trinidad, Grenada, Guyana, Dom Rep, SVG, St. Lucia, Costa Rica and Barbados. Zimbabwe and Ghana were represented from the Continent. Canada was represented as well as 13 states of the U.S.
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In addition to the powerhouse convergence of top-tier artistes and key stakeholders, IMC this year looked at “Defining your Style” with Caribbean Lifestyle Doyenne Novia McDonald Whyte, Ayana Riviere, Keneea Linton-George, Carla Gittens, Neko “Bootleg Rocstar” Kelly and Paris Cole.
There was an immersive two-day song writing workshop on February 22nd and 23rd, centered on the art of crafting impactful punch lines and clever rhymes. The workshop was lead by songwriter/Producer Mikey Bennett who says in all his years of doing workshops and camps “This was the best one and the most fun”.
The final day saw the Premiere of the DocuFilm BAD LIKE BROOKLYN DANCEHALL – a riveting exploration of the rise of Dancehall in Brooklyn. It detailed the immigration, the soundsystem culture and those that set and fed the genre in the cold. A perfect end to a week of culture.
IMC Chairman and Co-Founders Orville ‘Shaggy’ Burrell, Judith Bodley and Sharon Burke are pleased with the turnout and the outcomes of 2024, though they still want to see more of the new and rising artistes attend. They’ve promised that just like this year, 2025 will be even better than the year before.
The 2024 edition of the conference was endorsed by the Ministry of Culture and supported by the Jamaica Tourist Board. Onboard with the project in a big way were Tastee Jamaica Limited, YOUTUBE, the CDB, Pepsi, IRIE FM, ZIP FM, SUNCITY FM, CVM Television and The Jamaica Observer Ltd. Other sponsors included IPrint, KFC, Kendel, KitKat and Hertz.
For years, Shaggy‘s 2000 hit “It Wasn’t Me” has been a running meme thanks to its borderline ridiculous insistence on repeating the title after being caught in all sorts of compromising positions. Fans of The Roots also apparently have the song to thank for helping to keep the band afloat at a time “alternative hip-hop” didn’t get much support from major labels, according to Questlove. The song even ended up in a Super Bowl ad featuring real-life couple Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis.
But according to Shaggy, fans have had the song all wrong for the past 20 years. In a new interview with People about his upcoming Hot Summer Nights Tour, Shaggy insists “It Wasn’t Me” is not a “cheating song,” despite all evidence to the contrary in the humorously over-the-top lyrics. “It was a big misconception with that song because that song is not a cheating song,” he said. “It’s an anti-cheating song. It’s just that nobody listened to the record to the end.”
He continues, “There’s a part in the record where it’s a conversation between two people and you have one guy, which is me at that point, giving that bad advice, like, ‘Yo, bro, how could you get caught? Just tell her, ‘It wasn’t me,’’ and then at the end, the guy says, ‘I’m going to tell her that I’m sorry for the pain that I’ve caused. I’ve been listening to your reasoning, it makes no sense at all. Going to tell her that I’m sorry for the pain that I’ve caused. You might think that you’re a player, but you’re completely lost.’”
“Nobody hears that part!” Shaggy laments. “That’s what the song says. But everybody’s just caught up on that, ‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.’ It’s an anti-cheating song. No one ever really buys into that, and I keep explaining it to people. Then, they go listen to it back and be like, ‘Oh dude, I totally missed that.’” Still, he takes the misunderstanding into stride. “I think it has helped in the life of the song,” he points out. “What’s so good about that song is that it was relatable throughout the years. People do have this whole situation with cheating, and the thing about that is that you could be young, old, Black, white, straight, gay, whatever it is, it’s still relatable.”
Multi-GRAMMY Award-winning supergroup TLC and multi-GRAMMY Award-winning Jamaican icon Shaggy have united for the TLC & Shaggy: Hot Summer Nights Tour 2023.
Joining TLC and Shaggy on tour will be En Vogue and Sean Kingston. The tour begins on June 1 at Oak Mountain Amphitheatre in Pelham, Alabama, and stops in Miami, Toronto, Phoenix, and other cities before coming to an end on July 14 in Calgary, Alberta.
Tickets will be available starting with a Citi presale beginning Tuesday, March 14. The general on sale for TLC & Shaggy: Hot Summer Nights 2023 will start Friday, March 17th at 10 AM local time on LiveNation.com.
You can see the full run of dates below.
HOT SUMMER NIGHTS 2023 TOUR DATES:
DATES INCLUDE FULL LINEUP UNLESS NOTED OTHERWISE (SEE BELOW)
^Not a Live Nation Date | ~Tickets for this show will go onsale at a later date
Thu Jun 01 – Pelham, AL – Oak Mountain Amphitheatre
Sat Jun 03 – Miami, FL – FPL Solar Amphitheater @ Bayfront Park
Sun Jun 04 – St. Augustine, FL – The St. Augustine Amphitheatre
Wed Jun 07 – Raleigh, NC – Coastal Credit Union Music Park @ Walnut Creek
Fri Jun 09 – Bristow, VA – Jiffy Lube Live
Sat Jun 10 – Holmdel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts Center
Sun Jun 11 – Mansfield, MA – Xfinity Center
Tue Jun 13 – Wantagh, NY – Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater
Thu Jun 15 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage
Fri Jun 16 – Saratoga Springs, NY – Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Sat Jun 17 – Hartford, CT – XFINITY Theatre
Wed Jun 21 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH – Blossom Music Center
Fri Jun 23 – Tinley Park, IL – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Sat Jun 24 – Noblesville, IN – Ruoff Music Center
Sun Jun 25 – Clarkston, MI – Pine Knob Music Theatre
Wed Jun 28 – Maryland Heights, MO – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Fri Jun 30 – Irving, TX – The Pavilion At Toyota Music Factory
Sat Jul 01 – The Woodlands, TX – The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Sun Jun 02 – Lake Cowichan, BC – Laketown Shakedown^ (with Shaggy Only | Buy Tickets Here)
Mon Jul 03 – Austin, TX – Bass Concert Hall^~ (with TLC, Shaggy, & Sean Kingston Only | Buy Tickets Here or Here)
Thu Jul 06 – Salt Lake City, UT – Granary Live^ (with Shaggy & Sean Kingston Only | Buy Tickets Here)
Brown University awards Reggae artist Shaggy with an honorary degree.
The Jamaican born artist, real name Orville Burrell performed during Brown University’s Class of 2020’s in-person commencement yesterday that came after the two year COVID-inspired shutdowns and delays.
Brown University also awarded Shaggy an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts degree. Not only a pioneering songwriter, Shaggy served four years in the U.S. Marines, including two tours of duty in the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Storm.
The Providence Rhode Island university, awarded a total of nine honorary doctorates. Including U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and several other candidates who have achieved great distinction in a variety of fields.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was the Commencement keynote speaker on Sunday for Brown’s 2022 class graduation. Pelosi urged the graduating class to believe in hope and goodness, despite our turbulent times.
As Black History Month comes to a close, the 2022 NAACP Image Awards cap off a month celebrating black contributions to society. After the ceremony on Saturday, February 26, the celebrating will continue in a big way with DJ Cassidy’s special Reggae edition of Pass The Mic following the 53rd NAACP Image Awards. The special, DJ Cassidy’s Pass The Mic: BET Afterparty 2022, brings together Reggae and dancehall icons, celebrating Reggae’s influence on hip-hop and global culture.
DJ Cassidy sat down with The Source to talk about the show, whose lineup includes artists such as Shaggy, Maxi Priest, Super Cat, Barrington Levy, Ini Kamoze, Sister Nancy, Junior Reid, Patra, and more.
The inspiration for the show came from his past experience DJing, the overwhelming success of Pass the Mic, and his passion for a wide variety of musical genres.
He describes how the overwhelming emotional response to the first Pass the Mic in July 2020 inspired him to continue and he immediately began envisioning future installments of the concept.
“Looking back, I see now that each vision was a derivative of my former record crates that I carried to each deejay gig around the world,” he explains. “Before technology changed the game, I loaded six to eight one hundred pound steel cases that each held about 100 pieces of vinyl into every New York City taxi and onto every airplane. I categorized each crate by some form genre or era of music. From the very beginning of my Pass The Mic journey, I dreamed about a Reggae edition, a manifestation of that coveted Reggae record crate. As a hip-hop kid growing up in New York City, incorporating Reggae into my deejay sets was second nature. Dancehall stars were also hip-hop stars.”
He explains how when he first began conceptualizing this edition, he “wanted to represent those iconic dancehall records that played a special role in that crate, in my repertoire, and in my life in general.”
He also emphasizes how he really wanted to represent the various diverse facets of Reggae music, unbound by era, year, or decade, stating that “each of the sixteen songs featured on this show not only holds a special place in my heart, but holds a special place in the history of Reggae music and its massive influence on hip-hop, R&B, and pop music. Some dominated the hip-hop airwaves of radio stations like Hot 97 in the 1990s, while others topped the Billboard Pop Charts in the 1980s. Some fused with R&B and achieved massive commercial success, while others remain the most sampled songs of all times. Simply put, each of these records changed the game.”
While the show will definitely have many of the Pass the Mic trademark staples, Cassidy is also quick to note that viewers are in for a special treat with some of the differences that this show promises.
“Sixteen iconic records are featured in this show, more records on one show than ever before,” he explains. “There were simply so many definitive songs I wanted to celebrate. This edition brings the rapid-fire pace of Pass the Mic to new heights.
Cassidy has also partnered with some major industry names to make the upcoming show a success. In addition to superstar television producer, Jesse Collins (who recently produced the iconic hip-hop Superbowl Halftime show) and legendary music impresario, Steve Rifkind (founder of Loud and SRC Records), Cassidy partnered with renowned Reggae renaissance woman Sharon Burke and her team of Judth Bodley and Debrina Smith. “As a producer, promoter, and manager, Sharon has been at the helm of countless iconic Reggae moments over a span of decades. I knew that with her by my side, we would create something truly special that would go down in music history”, says Cassidy.
As for the future, Cassidy has no plans to limit his Pass the Mic experience to the western hemisphere, especially since over the course of the first eight editions of Pass the Mic, one of his signature catchphrases has become, “passing the mic all over the world.”
“Through Pass The Mic, I’ve always sought to create global connections between artists and fans and build bridges between both genres and viewers. Never has that mission been more fulfilled than in this installment,” he says of the upcoming performance.
“Witnessing the massive global response that Pass The Mic: Volume One and Pass The Mic: Volume Two received, I was overwhelmed by the international influence of classic hip-hop and R&B,” he says. “I always sought for the series to connect people musically on an international level, and no edition represents that mission more effectively than this upcoming special. In the future, as Pass the Mic continues to grow both on television, the stage, and beyond, I hope to constantly expand on that mission. As Afrobeat and Reggaeton’s cultural influence continues to explode, I would love to pass the mic to the icons, past, present, and future, that shaped their global impact. During President Biden’s televised Inauguration, I passed the mic to Ozuna and Luis Fonsi in front of 40 million viewers with two records that dominated global music charts, “Taki Taki” and “Despacito.” The sky’s the limit. I’d also love to celebrate Brazilian music and pass the mic to one of my greatest musical heroes, Sergio Mendes.”
He concludes by saying that “at the end of the day, no matter the category, genre, or era of music, each installment of Pass The Mic celebrates the greatest artists and greatest songs of all time by connecting those artists to their fans in a more intimate way than ever before.”
