Sean Paul Cancels Show In Order To Spend Father’s Day With His Kids
Dancehall superstar Sean Paul says he recently forfeited a show, just so that he can spend Father’s Day with his children.
The Temperature artist was speaking with Ebony magazine after being asked what fatherhood was like for him at age 50, and what he was “most looking forward to for Father’s Day.”
“Let me tell you something. I literally just cancelled a show that was supposed to take place on Father’s Day because I want to spend it with mi pickney,” Sean said.
“Fatherhood is a new chapter of life for me, you know. I’m someone who did this late. But, they keep me feeling young, and remind me so much of myself. I think they are the best song I ever wrote. It’s all still new for me, but it’s such a blessing,” he added.
Sean Paul became a father at age 44, when he and wife Jodi ‘Jinx’ Henriques, welcomed their son Levi Blaze Henriques in February 2017 after five years of marriage.
They welcomed their second child, a daughter named Remi Leigh Henriques, in August 2019.
In April last year, the doting dad had revealed to the Star that he took his daddy duties so seriously that he had wasted no time in returning home from Las Vegas following the GRAMMY Awards ceremony, not because SOJA won the Best Reggae Album Grammy Award, but because he “needed to be in Jamaica,” to attend Levi’s sports day.
“The Grammys was in the night and I left basically 4am… and sports day was the next day. Certain things are important in a child’s life and, even right now, I’m scheduling a lot of things around what my children are doing, what’s on their timetable. A schedule is important to them, [so] from meetings to studio and rehearsal times, I schedule a lot around them,” Sean had explained at the time.
Sean Paul also said that he wanted to be a role model for his own children, and to have his presence felt, unlike in his own childhood, where his father was absent from his life for the most part.
The eldest of two boys born to Frances and Garth Henriques, Paul grew up in a multi-ethnic family in upscale Kingston.
When he was about 9 years old, his father, a former coach of Jamaica’s National Water Polo team, made headlines in the summer of 1982 when he was found floating on a life raft about 30 miles east of Port Everglades in Florida with 700 pounds of marijuana that he had attempted to fly in from Jamaica.
He also told Ebony that while his career causes him to spend a lot of time away from his family, one of his main goals in life is to ensure his two children know what it feels like to have fatherly love.
“I know what it feels like to have that void of not having a parent around and I fortunately made it through because I had one parent that really cared and put in a lot of dedication and time. I figured, maybe if I had two parents doing that, the influence would have been greater and I would have more discipline in areas that I do not,” he had explained.
“When I have to be away, I have to be away. But when I am here, I definitely want them to feel that. To influence children in a positive way, that’s my effort,” he added back then.
Last year, in a News In Germany interview Sean Paul had while it was hard to spend copious amounts of time with his family due to constant touring, he always tried to “FaceTime them often, sometimes even during the show”.
“My children know what I do for a living. My son maybe a little more. He’s seen me on stage – and now he’s face-timed with me while I perform. My daughter knows what I’m doing, but she’s only two years old. So I don’t think she realizes the extent of my work yet. But it’s great to be a father. Even with my job, I can come home and be a normal person to them and just be a parent, that’s great,” he had said.