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Even hard-back reporters and photographers seemed seriously jealous of the attention that the cute little boy, hardly more than a toddler, was getting from grown women in the editorial department of The Gleaner newspaper.He wasn't overly troublesome and didn't interrupt the work flow, as did so many other visiting children brought there to await their mothers who, apparently, could not afford a babysitter or daycare. This was early 1970s.Yet, you couldn't ignore the small boy. For one, the women constantly worked his poor little cheeks and muttered child talk like "you're tho cyuthe" and "what a tweeth little boy". But more interestingly, he seemed to soak up the attention as if he knew there was some hidden significance.How could the grown-ups have known that they were among the privileged few getting the first glimpses of the boy who would become the world-famous reggae and dancehall superstar, Orville 'Shaggy' Burrell, 'Mr Boombastic', 'Mr Lover Lover'? And could their early attention have helped to light the spark?The staggering heights to which he has climbed from Kingston's sprawling slums, to be embraced today by no less than America's revered Disney/ABC; British superstar crooner Sting and the music world's standard Grammy, is simply astounding.It was something to behold as Shaggy and Sting were featured Thanksgiving night, November 28, 2019 as part of the production dubbed 'The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration'.But there was nothing magical about the desperate poverty into which little Orville was born. So when Shaggy signed his first one million-pound recording contract, of course it blew his mind! To grasp the full magnitude of this surreal moment, one must retrace time to 1968 Rae Town, the teeming Kingston ghetto.Shaggy's parents, Lorraine Veronica Dewar and Clifton Burrell, were living in a tenement yard at Charlotte Street, Rae Town, when he was born at the University Hospital of the West Indies, exactly 53 years to the day today. He attended school at the Duhaney Park Primary and later the Edith Dalton James Secondary in St Andrew while living with his grandmother.At age 16, Shaggy joined his mother who had migrated to New York, and attended the Erasmus Hall Academy in Flatbush, Brooklyn. His first big attraction was music and he adopted the style of his hero, DJ King Yellowman.It was anybody's guess as to whether Rae Town was any worse than where he lived in Flatbush, New York, keeping company with drug-dealing toughs on the mean, hungry streets of Brooklyn and threatening any moment to lose his way... and possibly his life.But music was the mainstay of his life, mostly deejaying at parties and dancehall sessions. In 1986, he got what would be his first big break through promoter Paul "Rossy" Lee, owner of the Gibraltar sound system, for which he won his first dancehall clash against a sound system called Aquarius.His first two hits were Mampy and Big Up Big Up which launched him in New York as a ghetto superstar at age 24. He was invited to tour Brazil and Canada with Maxi Priest, earning US$500 a week.Not long after, when two of his close friends got involved in a shooting incident in which two men were killed, Shaggy thought that could have been his fate and the next day he fled into the arms of the US Marines base at Paris Island, South Carolina.After training he spent four years at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina. He saw active duty in the first Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait, spending seven months in the Saudi Arabian desert, and received an honourable discharge in 1991, taking up where he had left off with his music and recording.Shaggy was later to credit his time in the US military for his success, saying he had learnt the value of hard work, discipline and how to manage his money.But he vividly remembers the ups and downs of the long roller coaster journey to superstardom; being awed by the sheer star power of Yellowman; experiencing the shock of it all when the American king of pop Michael Jackson was able to tell him so much about himself when they collaborated on a production; and watching the rise of Beenie Man as he himself plunged from his lofty perch in one of his lowest moments.When he produced his first international hit, Oh Carolina, on the independent label Signet licensed to Green Sleeves and signed by Virgin Records for an eye-popping one million pounds. He never looked back.Then came the fantastic Mr Boombastic which Levi's jeans featured in their commercial. The Boombastic album won the Grammy Award in 1996. Sometime after, he was called by Michael Jackson's producer, Terry Lewis, to do a song for the soundtrack of the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Shaggy's song, Love Me Love Me, featured Janet Jackson and became a hit single, selling platinum.His next big signing was with MCA Records which produced the Hot Shot album with the megahits It Wasn't Me and Angel. It was the first reggae dancehall album to sell diamond after Bob Marley's Legend.It Wasn't Me, which features Rickardo "RikRok" Ducent, has its own impressive history. It is regarded as Shaggy's breakthrough single in the pop market and is his highest-charting song to date on Billboard. It was his first number one hit in the US and subsequently topped charts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.It Wasn't Me is featured prominently on China, a catchy, Spanish/reggaeton/EDM adaptation that samples the hit single. The song was recorded by Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna & J Balvin for Anuel AA's studio album Emmanuel.The Latin pop banger quietly amassed over one billion views on YouTube, having achieved over 53.6 million views globally during the week of August 23-29, 2019, making it a number one single on the global YouTube music videos chart.After the gig with MCA, he signed with Universal's Geffen label.In 2007, he was again nominated for a Grammy for the single Fight the Feeling with Beres Hammond. Seven years later he signed a major three-album deal with Sony.In recent years, 'Mr Boombastic's success has quadrupled. His 2018 European summer concert ticket sales with pop/rock legend Sting, as reported by Billboard Boxscore, grossed over US$10 million, placing him at number four on the Hot Tours tally. Celine Dion was number one.That year also, he was among a galaxy of stars who performed at Queen Elizabeth's 92nd birthday party at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England. The London performance was one of many high-profile appearances by the reggae star, which included performances on both the CBS Grammy television special, as well as the NBC Superbowl finals show that year.The Grammy winner teamed with Sting to win the Best Reggae Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and wrapped 2019 with an appearance on the ABC TV and Disney Channel's Thanksgiving and Christmas specials in the US.His latest collab with Sean Paul and Spice, Go Down Deh, has, not surprisingly, excited US television talk show audiences and ferociously obliterated some big songs on numerous reggae charts.As Shaggy's success grew over the years, he felt a need to give back to the land of his birth. In 1998 on a visit to the Bustamante Hospital for Children, he heard heartbreaking stories about the shortages of vital equipment that could save lives at the hospital.He started the Shaggy Make a Difference Foundation on a suggestion from William Mahfood and promoted the highly successful Shaggy and Friends concert series that has since raised millions of dollars for the hospital.In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the Jamaican music industry and his charitable work, Shaggy was honoured with the national award of the Order of Distinction (Commander Class, CD), and a Jamaica Observer Business Leader special award for similar exploits.Looking to the future, he told a recent newspaper interviewer: "I'm really excited about what is coming next. I surround myself with really young producers. I'm fascinated by technology, I'm always listening to new music and trying to create some sort of a hybrid fusion, so to speak, moving forward."The story of this Orville 'Shaggy' Burrell is one that all Jamaican children should and must read and be inspired by, knowing that yet again, here is a Jamaican who has made it out of virtually nowhere, threatened by the darkness but defeating the odds at every turn, until the shining moment of his glorious triumph.We should look back to Rae Town on that otherwise uneventful October 22 morning in 1968 and give thanks for the birth of a star, even if mother Dewar and father Burrell could not have dreamed it then, that from their loins would come this wonderful gift to Jamaica and the world.Happy birthday, Orville "Shaggy" Burrell!