While Sean Paul’s NPR Tiny Desk performance had many taking a trip down memory lane, jamming to their favorite tunes such as “Get Busy,” “Gimmie Di Light,” and “Temperature,” the dancehall king’s ethnicity also became a topic of discussion.
Jamaican-born dancehall singer/rapper Sean Paul dropped his first album in 2000. However, it was his sophomore project, “Dutty Rock,” that gained him international popularity in 2002. He released four singles from the album, collaborated with Busta Rhymes and Beyonce, and went three-time Platinum in the United States.
Following Sean Paul’s May 31 Tiny Desk performance, an X user wrote, “Any time Sean Paul comes up, I feel it important to point out that I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of a non-Black Jamaican as a child so I just thought he was faking the accent and no one cared for the longest time.”
The tweet sparked a conversation across the X and Instagram platforms about the dancehall artist’s ethnicity, with one fan in The Shade Room’s Instagram comments referring to the platinum-selling artist as the “Jamaican Drake.”
“SEAN PAUL THE JAMAICAN DRAKE,” they wrote.
“The disrespect,” a fan clapped back. “Sean Paul is Sean Paul. He was around before Drake even knew what Jamaican culture was.”
“It’s like ppl don’t know that Jamaican isn’t a race. Sean Paul is Sean Paul. Not a fake like Drake,” another person said, referencing the “God’s Plan” background, which includes a Jewish Canadian mother and an African-American father.
Sean Paul’s wife, Jodi Henriques, was swift to shut down the noise, resonating with one comment that suggested her husband is a man of the culture.
In response to the user who called Sean Paul the “Jamaican Drake,” another Instagram user responded, “No he’s not. Sean Paul raised within the culture he’s not a vulture.” Jodi replied in agreement with a thumbtack emoji, indicating that the person was spot on.
On X, photos of Sean Paul’s parents began to go viral.
“And today is the day I found out Sean Paul is NOT a light-skinned black man because what do you mean these are his parents?!?” an X user wrote alongside photos of the artist’s mom and dad.
Sean Paul Ryan Francis Henriques was born to parents Garth and Frances Henriques in Kingston, Jamaica. According to the New York Times, the Henriques family is one of the oldest Jewish families to immigrate to Jamaica from Portugal in the 17th century. In addition to his Sephardic Jewish and Portuguese background, Sean Paul’s father, Garth Henriques, also has Afro-Jamaican heritage. His mother has a mixture of Chinese and British ancestry.
In a 2022 interview with Vibe magazine, Sean Paul explained how his bloodline is a melting pot.
“Yeah. My dad’s mom is mixed with Jamaican African, or I say Black people, and also white people. [As a child,] I said to him, ‘Dad, where do we come from?’ He said [Henriques] was a Portuguese name, and we came on the ship with Columbus. They were horse thieves and got in trouble with Columbus. They were shipwrecked and stayed in Jamaica like, ‘We ain’t leaving.’ And that’s 400 years of history,” the star said.
“We used to have jokes as kids, and people were like, ‘What are you?’ And we used to say, ‘We are mongrel. Mix up,’” the platinum-selling artist said.
Adding, “When I look back, growing up, sometimes people would cuss like, ‘Those people.’ And I’m like, ‘But that’s my grandma.’ And then other people would say, ‘Those people.’ I’m like, ‘But that’s my uncs [uncle].’”
Out of the almost 3 million people that live in Jamaica, 92.1 percent are Black. Sean Paul belongs to the second-largest population that identifies as mixed (6.1 percent), according to the CIA World Factbook.
Still, fair-skinned and all, he reps the Black, Green, and Yellow, as any other ‘yardie,’ something that Drake simply can’t authentically do, no matter how many Jamaicans are in his circle or how often he affects a Jamaican accent.
But even in that, the “Baby Boy” chart-topper refuses to be identified by those outside of the big island.
He said, “There’s no way to put me in a box in that respect.”
“Yes, some of our ancestors were slaves, some were slave drivers,” he concedes. “But for me, I think, the type of person I am, I kind of encompass what Jamaica is—out of many, one people.”
