Sean Paul released his album Live N Livin featuring a legion of dancehall stars.
Internationally-acclaimed dancehall superstar Sean Paul has been on a campaign to champion unity and denounce the division that is so prevalent in the dancehall community. He announced at the top of the year that he will drop two albums in 2021 loaded with features in an effort to prove that it should be “collaboration over confrontation.” Today arrives the first of the two projects, which features a list of 20 dancehall musicians from freshmen to veterans. There is 21 names on the guest lists but Mutabaruko isn’t a dancehall artist, which is why we said 20. Still his contribution to this project as well as SP’s career is well documents by Urban Islandz.
The project titled Live N Livin is a 16-track album produced by Dutty Rock Productions. Among the plethora of big-name guest stars are the likes of Buju Banton, Mavado, Damian Marley, and more. Ahead of the release, Busy Signal dropped his collaboration from the project titled “Boom,” which is a raging upbeat track that demands the type of dancing you will only find in the dancehall. It served as a great way to kick off the rollout of Live N Livin, which is SP’s first studio album since 2014.
His “collaboration over confrontation” campaign has proved to be a good move so far, and one can only hope that it will incite a trend in the dancehall community. A number of the artists featured on the album have never collaborated with each other prior and probably weren’t even planning to work together. Sean Paul also recruited several artists from the younger dancehall generation for the project to keep it balanced, so the tracklist also includes Govana, Skillibeng, Intence, Masicka, Squash, and more.
Live N Livin was released today, March 12 and is available to stream or purchase on all digital platforms. This album follows 2014’s Full Frequency, which was released by Atlantic.
Despite the plethora of artists on the project, there are no female artists, and one big name is still missing, Shaggy. In fact, Sean Paul and Shaggy have yet to collaborate despite being two of the biggest artists in dancehall’s history. SP opened up about Shaggy’s impact on his early career. He also credited radio and cultural icon Mutabaruko for giving him his first radio play.
“My first song that played on the radio was that demo and there is a dub poet in Jamaica who has a radio show that he would play different conscious material and back then my songs were really conscious,” the deejay said.
Since dropping his new album, Live N Livin, at midnight, the project has been getting positive reviews from fans. “Best dancehall album I listen in a while, Sean Paul deserve more ratings from Jamaicans this man been carrying dancehall since the 90s til now,” one fan wrote.
