Sean Paul The ‘Get Busy’ singer is widely regarded as one of the most successful dancehall artists of all time, but fans may be surprised to learn his career might have taken a different path were it not for one West Indies cricketer.
That’s after the man behind platinum-selling ‘Temperature’ revealed the inspiration for his ‘Sean da Paul’ moniker was former West Indies star Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
Despite the fact Paul has been prominent in the music industry since the mid-1990s. The Jamaican artist is asked in Vice’s The Story of Sean Paul’s Get Busy how he became ‘Sean da Paul’, and explains the origins.
“There is a famous cricketer in Trinidad [Guyana], Shivnarine Chanderpaul. Everyone was like ‘Sean da Paul’, and that name stuck. And then I just started to say it in shows and met the dude Chanderpaul years later, and he’s like ‘Yo!’ But yeah, big up to Shivnarine Chanderpaul.”
Guyana-born Chanderpaul was inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame just last month, meaning Paul’s admission only adds to a special period for the once-prolific batsman…
WTF Fact of the Day ft. Shivnarine Chanderpaul pic.twitter.com/wVWz87rP0i
— Hardik Rajgor (@Hardism) December 14, 2022
One curious cricket aficionado who tweaked onto Paul’s utterance early on is commentator Santokie Nagulendran, who tweeted in 2017 that he
“used to think Sean Paul was shouting out Chanderpaul at the beginning of every song in a weird tribute to the Cricket player.” In an update to his suspicion more than five years later, Nagulendran posted footage of Paul’s admission with a simple “OMG.”
Chanderpaul played 164 Test matches for the West Indies across a 21-year international career and scored 11,867 runs. That’s the eighth-highest Test run total accumulated by any player and the second-most by a West Indies player, second only to Brian Lara (11,953).