Shaggy explains the story of "It Wasn't Me"

Brut America

Was "It Wasn't Me" a song about cheating? We asked Shaggy himself...

Transcript

00:00♪ But she caught me on the counter, it wasn't me ♪

00:02♪ Saw me banging on the sofa, it wasn't me ♪

00:05♪ I even had her in the shower, it wasn't me ♪

00:07♪ She even caught me on camera, it wasn't me ♪

00:10Yo everybody, this is Shaggy, Mr. Love,

00:12love of Boom Buster, Guru Mantra, yeah.

00:15And you're tuned to Brood, yeah.

00:18Number one, salute, Mr. Love, I said that.

00:20♪♪♪♪♪

00:29It's crazy when it comes to wasn't me,

00:31is I was in the process of writing the Hot Shot album.

00:34And I had watched a comedy special

00:38from Eddie Murphy called Raw.

00:40And in the comedy special, there's a skit

00:44that he says he got caught and the woman comes in

00:47and he says, wasn't me.

00:49And she's like, but I saw you on the counter, wasn't me.

00:52But I wasn't, I got you on camera, wasn't me.

00:57You know what I mean?

00:58And he was saying, oh, she still took him back,

00:59you know, and that's how dudes are.

01:01And it was a whole skit and it was really funny.

01:04So I thought, I said, man, that's so funny.

01:06That's a song in a sense, because it is so relatable.

01:10And whenever I write songs, I try to write them

01:12where they're relatable to general people's lives.

01:15You know, and the thing about it wasn't me,

01:17is either you're banging, you know,

01:18somebody banging or you wish you're banging.

01:20It is very relatable to people's lives.

01:24And so I sat with my little townhouse here in Kingston

01:29with a friend of mine by the name of Rick Rock.

01:31And we just started to come up with the melodies.

01:33And then the lyrics of Bonnie came in

01:35and she caught me red-handed

01:36creeping with the girl next door.

01:39And we wrote the song.

01:40We had a lot of laughs because we were coming up with these,

01:43she caught me on the counter.

01:45You know what I mean?

01:46We were saying like, yeah, she was spying,

01:48she was spying in a tree.

01:49We were doing all these other scenarios, you know?

01:53And of course we sent her down, caught me on the counter,

01:55saw me banging on the sofa,

01:57even had her in the shower.

01:58You know what I mean?

01:59We ended up going there, but there were all these,

02:01we were thinking so outside the box of crazy.

02:04We said, oh yeah,

02:05we should have her swinging from the chandelier.

02:07It was all kind of crazy stuff.

02:09And it became just this, you know,

02:12we were like, okay guys, you know,

02:13we really need to make this to where it's airplay.

02:15So we need to write adult content without being explicit.

02:18And we just thought it was, I thought it was really funny.

02:21I thought it was such a hit that when I brought it

02:25into my record company, they couldn't understand it.

02:27And so it's so much to a point that my manager

02:29didn't want it to go on the album.

02:30He thought it was total rubbish.

02:32You got to remember at that time,

02:33we were in a Britney Spears and NSYNC mode.

02:36So there was nothing that sounded like it.

02:38And that's why the record company was like,

02:39what the are you bringing to me?

02:41This isn't, what is this?

02:43How are we going to market this?

02:44It doesn't fit with what's going on right now.

02:46Okay, we're not going to spend a lot of money on this guy.

02:49A lot of people thought it was a cheating song,

02:51but really if you listen to it down the end,

02:53on that bridge section, I'm going to tell her that I'm sorry

02:55for the things that I've done.

02:56You might think that you're a player,

02:57but you're completely lost.

02:59Was really what it's about.

03:02It's me telling a story.

03:04And at the end, the guy is saying,

03:07hey, that's total that you're talking.

03:10I want to, I'm going to go and apologize to my girl.

03:13You know what I mean?

03:14And she's not going to take the picture that you're selling.

03:16And that's the story of it.

03:18The thing is nobody really listened to the record

03:21down to the end.

03:21It was such a club smash that everybody just partied to it.

03:24You know what I mean?

03:25And all the guys love it because he's like,

03:26hey, it wasn't me.

03:27It wasn't me.

03:28You know what I mean?

03:29And the crazy thing about it was when this record

03:31was at its peak, we were getting a little bit

03:35of a backlash from some women rights group about it

03:40and how it's a cheating song.

03:43And this song is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

03:45But then when we looked at the sales of it,

03:49you know, and got the data on the record,

03:52it was predominantly women that were downloading this record.

03:55It was written, the people who were buying it

03:59was mainly women that were buying it.

04:01I was like, oh my God.

04:02You know?

04:03And so it's either two things is telling you that

04:05either women are just way better players than men,

04:10you know, or it's just a myth, you know?

04:13So it's just one of them things,

04:15but it is really an anti-cheating song.

04:18Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.

04:22Just such an infectious melody.

04:25You know, that's what I really love about it.

04:27I have always made music selfishly.

04:28I make music so that I like it,

04:30and if I like it, then I'm good.

04:33Do you get what I'm saying?

04:34So I never really paid attention to anybody else

04:37or what people say.

04:37They always write things.

04:38You know, I've been a one-hit wonder my whole career.

04:40You know, and somebody said to me,

04:41this, Shaggy, you're the most consistent one-hit wonder

04:44I know, you know, because I'm criticized

04:48because I started to do dancehall,

04:49but I didn't do dancehall in its authentic stage.

04:51I always did kind of a hybrid style of dancehall,

04:54and so the purists would always, you know,

04:56the dancehall and reggae purists would always criticize me,

05:00you know, but I don't pay any attention to it.

05:01I just kept doing music that was unique

05:03because I just said to myself,

05:04well, they criticized Bob Marley, too,

05:06and said, you know, his music was rubbish,

05:09and yet still it became the blueprint

05:12of what reggae and dancehall,

05:13of what reggae music is today,

05:14that it really changed my life,

05:16and it brought me to a mainstream

05:18and it brought me on all these other platforms.

05:20So though I had Mr. Boombastic and Old Carolina

05:23and these records that were big,

05:25it wasn't me, it really was a record

05:27that brought me to a household name on a global scale.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended