The reggae fraternity is a small fraternity.
The Police, they were the guys that were like the gateway to the mainstream. In England, there was a very strong reggae movement that was going on. Anything that was happening in reggae happened out of England. They were brilliant. They could spot a sound that was cool, the 'it' sound.
Gays and lesbians should have the same rights as anybody else, and when they're in Jamaica, they do have the same rights.
India is a great place.
A lot of people do records, and they get hit records, but we were blessed with a lot of monsters. 'Oh Carolina' was a very monstrous record in 1993; so was 'Boombastic,' 'Angel' and 'It Wasn't Me.'
I like having big hooks and big records and sing-a-longs.
I came to the Unites States and realised I had a knack for coming up with rhymes and lyrics.
I have mixed feelings about Napster. I like what it can do for an unsigned band. It can help them sell 10,000 records. But for an established artist, there's already so much piracy around. They need to regulate it.
I've seen the harshest of reggae purists come give me my props because I've been at it for so long... They've seen me come from the hardest of hard-core dancehall to where I am, and they've heard my music change through the years. Some might not agree, but they respect.
After I made 'Oh Carolina' in the 1990s, the record company wanted me to copy that sound, and I refused.
Reggae is a culture. It's easy, laid-back.
I'm one of those artists that nobody ever sees coming. We started with Virgin in 1993. If you look at the climate of that time in reggae and you were to pick the top five people that'd have a shot at having mainstream success, I was nowhere in that equation at all.
If you listen to all my earlier stuff, it wasn't 'authentic reggae,' so to speak.
When we do reggae, it's normally a one-chord or a two-chord, or whatever it is. With Sting, there'll be chord changes, key changes.
My thing is to get people out of the stigma of what a reggae artist should be like.
I would never be about waking up early and do morning radio and TV back to back had I not been in the military, where they are throwing a garbage can in the middle of my squad bed at 5 o'clock in the morning for four years straight.
I'm inspired by day to day life, things that people go through, things that make people tick. Everybody has a story, so you try to put stories into songs and try to make it as entertaining as possible.
If you look at my track record, there was nothing on radio that sounded like 'Oh Carolina,' 'Mr Bombastic' when they came out.
I live vicariously through my songs.
America is a symbol of freedom - it's a symbol of democracy - and if that is threatened, we have to take this platform and use it to be a voice for the voiceless.
