Artists love singing their own names in their songs – Jason Derulo, DJ Khalid, Usher, Shakira, the list goes on.
And of course, Sean Paul who, as any karaoke aficionado will tell you, sings ‘Sean De Paul’ at the start of his tracks.
Apart from... he never actually has.
Yup, welcome to yet another example of the Mandela effect.
In the same way that Mr Monopoly has never had a monocle, Sally Field never actually said ‘you like me, you really like me’ and Jigsaw in the Saw movies never said ‘do you want to play a game?’.
If you’ve never heard of it, a Mandela effect is a phenomenon where people collectively remember the same thing, even though it didn’t happen or wasn’t accurate. It was named after Nelson Mandela and the false belief that the heroic activist was dead many years before he actually died.
“It occurs when many different people incorrectly remember the same thing, so essentially a collective false memory,” says Holly Schiff, a licensed clinical psychologist previously told Forbes.
Right back to Sean de Paul, or not, as it turns out.
In an interview with Vice, the Temperature singer breaks down another of his iconic songs – ‘Get Down’.
And just as the credits start to roll, Vice ask the singer why he started saying ‘Sean de Paul’ instead of ‘Sean Paul’ – only for him to reveal that he’s actually been saying neither.
“There was a famous cricketer in Trinidad, Shivarine Chanderpaul. Everybody was like ‘Chanderpaul’ and yo, that name stuck. And then I just started to say it at shows and met the dude Chanderpaul years later, and he’s like ‘Yo!’,” he explained.
“But yeah, big up to Shivarine Chanderpaul.”
Yup – our entire lives (and incredible karaoke performances) have been a completely and utter lie.