Shaggy Revealed As The ‘Space Bunny’ On ‘The Masked Singer’
In what could be described as an ironic twist of events Grammy Award-winning Jamaican superstar Shaggy was revealed as the Space Bunny in the most recent episode of The Masked Singer, following his elimination from the show.
The It Wasn’t Me singer represented Team Cuddly, and went up against Team Good’s Prince, and Team Bad’s Queen Cobra in episode 9 of the show.
Shaggy, whose given name is Orville Burrell, gave an energetic rendition of Now That We Found Love by Heavy D and the Boyz featuring Aaron Hall. During the rap portions of the hit, most listeners could tell that the person in the Space Bunny suit was not a Native American. In fact, his semi-obvious Caribbean accent caused two panelists—Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke to decipher that it was indeed Mr. Boombastic himself. Jenny McCarthy, on the other hand, guessed that it was Sean Kingston, while Ken Jeong was the furthest off, betting that it was Owen Wilson.
The shaggy dog in the Jamaican singer’s video package was a clue to Shaggy’s name. The crown was a clue to Shaggy’s hometown, Kingston, Jamaica, while the basketball on fire was a nod to Shaggy’s Diamond selling album Hot Shot.
“I can’t use my original singing voice because if I say ‘Mr Lover Lover, Boombastic’, it’s so distinctive people would have caught on to it,” Shaggy said after the reveal.
“I’m allergic to boredom and there’s this old saying that goes ‘you can’t achieve anything new if you’ve never done anything new.’ I am feeling pretty good going home tonight because it was a lot of fun,” he added.
‘Space Bunny’ was the 11th performer eliminated from Season 7. He placed third behind his other two competitors. Prince will go on to face Firefly and Ringmaster in the season finale.
The Masked Singer is now on its seventh season. Previous winners of the show include T-Pain, Wayne Brady, Kandi Burruss, LeAnn Rimes, Nick Lachey, and Jewel.
Shaggy has been keeping himself busy otherwise.
He and producer Sting are on the verge of releasing a new album titled Com Fly Wid Mi which features Shaggy singing the Frank Sinatra songbook in a reggae style.
Set for a May 25 release the pair – both managed by The Cherrytree Music Company – hand-picked a group of revered reggae, jazz and mainstream musicians and enlisted musical director, Rob Mathes (Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Fall Out Boy, Luciano Pavarotti, Celine Dion) and producer/musician, Steven “Lenky” Marsden (Sean Paul, Sly & Robbie, Smash Mouth, Jimmy Cliff, Beenie Man, Bounty Killer) to arrange the songs. Recorded in Miami and Jamaica, Com Fly Wid Mi was engineered by Grant Valentine, Earl Smith Jr. & Garfield McDonald and mixed by Robert “Hitmixer” Orton.