Nearly two decades after its release, “Mad Mad World” bu Shaggy featuring Sizzla and Collie Buddz has officially surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify.
The collaboration from Shaggy’s 2007 album Intoxication is Sizzla’s first-ever song to cross the 100 million streaming mark, Collie Buddz’s second and the eleventh track in Shaggy’s catalog to reach the milestone.
“I was playing in Vienna at a solo show, our crowd, our fans—about 7,000 people,” Shaggy told World Music Views. “I kept seeing people holding up their cell phones with ‘Mad Mad World’ on the screen. They weren’t standing next to each other, just scattered through the venue. At the end of the show, on the last song, I said, ‘Everybody keeps saying Mad Mad World!’ I sang it to them, and they all sang it back to me.”
Mad Mad World, he said, was never intended to be one of the defining records from Intoxication. Although it paired three of reggae and dancehall’s most recognizable voices, the song was never released as a single.
“That song was on the Intoxication album with me, Sizzla and Collie Buddz. It was never a single, but because of TikTok it became popular,” Shaggy said.
Released through VP Records on October 22, 2007, Intoxication became Shaggy’s eighth studio album which peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Reggae albums chart and No. 30 on the UK Independent Albums Chart.
Although it wasn’t a single, Mad Mad World is the first song from the album to reach 100 million. The promotional singles from the album were “Church Heathen” released 22 August 2007, “Bonafide Girl” released 11 March 2008, “Feel the Rush” released 2 June 2008 and “What’s Love” released 14 November 2008.
According to the Grammy-winning artist, one European label executive who would have been responsible to promote the song around the world, declined to push the record amid controversy surrounding Sizzla’s views on the LGBTQ community. It was around the same time when several European broadcasters placed Jamaican artists, including Sizzla and Buju Banton on radio blacklists.
Reflecting on the song’s eventual success, he added: “At the time, the label didn’t want to release it because there was controversy around Sizzla and the LGBTQ community, so we left it on the album. But now it’s Sizzla’s most-streamed song—100 million streams without promotion. It just shows that timing is everything.”
