Sean Paul set to play the Ricoh Arena

The Jamaican star, who has eight top 10 singles in the UK, will be supported by BBC Radio 1 DJ Charlie Sloth.

Sean has ties with the area because his grandmother used to live in both Coventry and Rugby, before moving to Jamaica. Members of his extended family still live in the area.

He became an international superstar in 2003 when he broke the Top 40 with Gimme The Light and Get Busy. Breathe, his collaboration with Blu Cantrell, took him to number one and he stayed there for a month.

Sean has been in the music business for almost 25 years and says the key to his longevity is an ongoing desire to be creative.

“I don’t know how I did it. I love music, I love to be in the studio and create. I think I create way more music than people hear from me. I’m trying to find the right one to represent me or just be remembered somehow. I try to stay up with trends and find things in the genre that remind me of when I was growing up, and I feel that’s what I did. I don’t like doing tracks that I’m not with. When people come with me and they want to do a song with me and I don’t like it and do it, if I hear it on the radio I’m going to be angry with myself. So I don’t know if people hear that, but that’s another reason.”

He won a Grammy in 2004 for Dutty Rock and has been nominated on seven other occasions. He has also won a slew of others awards, including at the MTV Europe Music Awards ceremony and the MOBOs.

He is pleased that there’s been a surge of Jamaican influences in mainstream music.

“Sometimes people at home are like, ‘Yo, they’re taking our genre!’ But we’re influencing them. The great Bob Marley was influenced by Curtis Mayfield, it became what we know as Bob Marley’s music: Reggaeton. Most of the artists in the Jamaica feel like, ‘Damn I’m trying so hard’. But Drake, and Bieber, and Major Lazer, all those people are influenced by the genre I did, but they took it to another level. So from that I can revamp.”