-Every song, the object
is to make a hit.
But for this particular song,
we wanted to make something
a little controversial.
-Every person, whether you're
black, white, young, old,
straight, gay, you all
have relationship problems.
Cheating is a part
of people's lives.
-It's the reality.
Who doesn't want to bang
on the bathroom floor?
Especially
with the girl next door.
They just don't want
to get caught.
-Yo, man.
-Yo.
-Open up, man.
-"Yo, my girl just caught me."
-"You make her catch you?"
-"I don't know what to do."
-And, you know, what else?
Say it wasn't you.
-♪ Alright ♪
♪ Honey came in,
and she caught me red-handed ♪
♪ Creeping with
the girl next door ♪
-You have to strategically write
these records,
because we're thinking
about airplay.
-Oh, I was worried about
every single line.
I'm like, "'Caught me
on the counter'?
That's what you want to say?
Really?"
-♪ How you can grant
your woman access your villa ♪
♪ Trespasser and a witness
while you cling to your -- ♪
-At that moment,
the music gets shut off.
"Yeah, man, that one's not gonna
get finished
and go on the album."
-Nobody could see this record.
Played it for everybody.
They just didn't see it.
-We were tanking.
We were gonna be dropped.
-It almost didn't make it
to the album.
The song that almost wasn't.
-And then, you know,
10 million later --
-♪ But she caught me
on the counter ♪
-♪ It wasn't me ♪
-♪ Saw me bangin' on the sofa ♪
-So, this is where, as they say,
the magic would happen.
It's such a long time,
and the room is
so different right now.
There was a cockpit board.
There were smaller speakers.
There were, like, credenzas here
with tape machines down here.
But this room is the room
that we did, initially,
"It Wasn't Me," 20 years ago.
You got to remember, dancehall,
back in the days,
was a niche kind of thing.
We were in Britney Spears
and NSYNC mode at the time.
There's nothing on the radio
that sounded like --
♪ How you can grant your woman
access to your villa ♪
♪ Trespasser and a witness -- ♪
There's nothing
that sounded like that.
I'm from Kingston, Jamaica.
My mother migrated
to the States.
I came up,
and I went to Brooklyn.
For me, that was like
a melting pot of people.
And I just really got into
sound systems and music
and became very good at it.
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
It was in the crack era
at the time,
and I was running with,
you know,
all the little hustlers
at that point,
you know,
as a young kid in Brooklyn.
A couple of my friends
got locked up.
And once you see your friends
start going down here
and there, I'm like,
"Yo, I'm out of here."
And I walked into
a recruiting office.
And I just looked
at the Marine uniform
and I was like, "Yeah,
I could get laid in this."
[ Laughs ]
"How do I get into this?"
When we went to Parris Island,
basic training,
they used to run
and sing cadences.
And I would make
these funny cadences up.
"I don't know,
but I've been told,"
and, you know, "My C.O. wears
pantyhose. Ooh-ooh!"
And it would make
all the recruits laugh.
And, you know, I ended up
voicing "Oh Carolina,"
which was my big breakout hit,
in this particular voice.
♪ Oh, Carolina ♪
♪ Prowl off ♪
♪ Jump, Carolina, come -- ♪
It's really like
singing cadence.
Who would have thought that
the pop world would be like,
"Yo, that's cool.
We need that."
You know what I mean?
It ended up going all the way
to number 1,
and all of a sudden,
Virgin Records came to me,
trying to sign me
for a million bucks.
And "Oh Carolina" was
the breaking ground for that.
I ended up voicing in a studio
called INS
with Sting International
at the time.
It was his beat.
-Well, this is the Sting
International studio.
This a custom
Neve 5088 Shelford console.
We have a bunch
of original analog gear.
Yeah, we use this to keep
the door open
sometimes when the wind
is blowing, you know?
I am Sting International,
deejay, producer,
composer, writer,
sound-system designer.
You know, music motherfucker.
This keyboard, I actually
played "Carolina."
This piece of shit doesn't work.
It's just a prop now.
[ Chuckles ]
It needs repair.
When I first met Shaggy,
I'm like,
"This guy's really nuts."
You know, he's just there --
He was going
all this animated --
I'm like, "Okay."
But that's what makes
a good artist.
You know, you got to be
a little bit nuts.
This is some of the records
in the collection.
-You know, Sting
International -- he's gifted.
You know, he's a deejay.
You know, he knows what works
in the club, you know,
just the way that record drop.
Him and I had this
musical marriage.
It just worked flawlessly.
-For the next album, I wanted
to go back to more dancehall,
more reggae-reggae.
This is the archive, the tapes
of all my work
throughout the years.
This here, I pulled it out
for you guys to see.
This is the original recording
tapes of "It Wasn't Me."
When we started production
on the "Hot Shot" album,
"It Wasn't Me"
was the first record I recorded.
It's just two horns.
Just two horns.
And the violin.
And I took my little $200 bass
and threw the funk in there.
Little kick.
Ahh!
Fat.
You know?
Get this, "Unh, unh, unh."
And that's pretty much it.
That's the groove.
Anything after that
is just the...
♪♪
Funky, you know?
But hard hip-hop,
pop at the same time.
You know, elements.
-So, Sting International always
gives me cassette
or a CD of a bunch
of loops that he did.
-Well, "It Wasn't Me"
was a little bit different,
because Shaggy just happened
to come off tour
and come by the crib
and just heard the beat play.
-That was just one of the beats
that just hit me.
It's all ear.
You know, I would hear it.
"Oh," you know --
And this beat just spoke to me.
And I'm catching these melodies.
[ Vocalizing ]
-And he heard it on
the sound system in the crib.
It was the real shit.
So, when you walk into the crib
and you're hearing
[vocalizing]
yeah, that motherfucker
heard that shit.
He wanted to be on that beat.
So, I took the beat.
I gave it to him on a cassette.
-I used to have these little
writing sessions
with my friends.
And Rikrok was a little
young writer that was there,
so him and I
used to just vibe.
He never wrote a hit before
or anything like that,
but he had something
about him, you know?
And his work ethic --
he loved doing it.
And he was quick, you know?
I liked that about him.
-[ Laughs ]
"Oh, got to let them know.
Shaggy!"
That's my Shaggy impression,
by the way,
in case you're wondering.
[ Chuckles ]
I was a young,
aspiring songwriter.
I would write more, you know,
like, ballad-y type,
in-love kind of type stuff.
At that time, there was
definitely a sense
that the stakes were high.
Shaggy had just been dropped
from his previous label.
Whatever we did now
had to be awesome.
-And we were sitting there
one day.
I think we were watching
Eddie Murphy's "Raw."
He had a skit where
he was talking about,
"It wasn't me."
-Walked in the kitchen and said,
"What the hell was you doing
in that bitch's house's today?"
You know what the man said?
It wasn't me.
-And that was just a joke,
and I said,
"Why don't we just write that?"
-So, I'm thinking about a topic.
I'm listening to the track.
All of a sudden,
it pops into my head...
[ Humming ]
And Shaggy's like,
"Record that."
He wouldn't usually come up
with the deejay melodies.
[ Vocalizing ]
So no words.
It's just melodies.
[ Vocalizing ]
"Record that one."
Right?
That's pretty much the process.
-And that was the whole melody,
and we just started from there.
-Shaggy became like
a bigger brother to me.
He was always giving me advice
and taught me this thing about,
you know,
the first line has to be,
like, pow, like, in your face.
And I don't know who came up
with that line.
♪ Honey came in, and
she caught me red-handed ♪
That right there -- you know
something's about to happen.
"Honey came in,
and she caught me red-handed."
Oh, crap.
-My aim at the point
was to write adult content
without being explicit, because
we were thinking about airplay.
♪ Picture this,
we were both butt-naked ♪
♪ Bangin' on
the bathroom floor ♪
Pretty straightforward.
"Mommy, what is banging?"
"He's really banging
on the bathroom floor."
It's easy.
You know.
-Oh, I was worried about
every single line.
I'm like, "I've never written
a song like this
before in my life."
♪ And she caught me
on the counter ♪
"'Caught me on the counter'?
That's what you want to say?
Really?"
And I'm thinking to myself,
"Well, good thing
I ain't singing it."
-We knew we had something
special because
we were all just laughing
while we were writing it.
-Everybody came to the studio
with the idea.
And I heard it.
I'm like, "Alright, that's fire.
That's fire.
We're gonna do this."
-I think the intro was really
Sting International's idea.
-Back in the days, I used
to always make these cassettes,
these mix cassettes.
My cassettes were known 'cause I
always had jingles in the front
or, like, these little skits.
Once you hear it, you're like,
"What are they talk--
What are they saying?"
They're having a conversation
instead of
a singing intro on the song.
-Yo, man.
-Yo.
-Open up, man.
-Yo, what you want, man?
-My girl just caught me.
-You let her catch you?
[ Laughs ]
-Conversation.
Get them locked in.
Then by the time
they turn around,
them drums come in and that --
[ Imitating drums ]
You're hooked.
-♪ Alright ♪
♪ Honey came in,
and she caught me red-handed ♪
♪ Creeping with
the girl next door ♪
♪ Picture this,
we were both butt-naked ♪
♪ Bangin' on
the bathroom floor ♪
-Rikrok's vocal on that --
you felt what he was singing
when he sang it.
-I sound genuinely worried.
Every line terrified me.
"You know, I hope nobody
realizes that I wrote this song.
I'm just not that guy.
I don't want to be associated
with this."
-♪ How you can grant your woman
access to your villa ♪
♪ Trespasser and a witness
while you cling to your pillow ♪
♪ You better watch your back
before she turn into a killer ♪
I think the first verse
is asking him,
"How could you let this happen?"
♪ To be a true player,
you got to know how to play ♪
♪ Never admit to a word
when she say ♪
♪ And if she claims it's you,
tell her, 'Baby, no way' ♪
-♪ But she caught me
on the counter ♪
-♪ It wasn't me ♪
-♪ Saw me bangin' on the sofa
-♪ It wasn't me ♪
-♪ I even had her
in the shower ♪
-You've got to have enough
English
in the record to grab people.
Now you need to bring it back
to the authenticity.
Straight hardcore dancehall.
You're not gonna understand
what the fuck it is,
but it just sounds great.
[ Humming ]
♪ A never you she see yah
make the gigolo flex ♪
You are so in tune
to try figuring out
what the fuck it's saying,
so you play it over
and over again.
It's like, "Oh, wow.
For real, this --
You know, this shit
is really saying some shit."
-♪ Quick 'pon yuh hansa,
know how fe talk ♪
♪ But if she pack a gun,
you betta run fast ♪
-♪ But she caught me
on the counter ♪
-♪ It wasn't me ♪
-♪ Saw me bangin' on the sofa ♪
-The bridge, now, was the
important part of the record.
So, the concept of the record
is, this guy is in problems.
I'm the devil player saying,
"Tell her it wasn't you.
Fuck. You know what I mean?
Lie."
-I mean, chicks ain't gonna
just dig that.
You got to apologize a little
bit, even if you don't mean it.
It's got to say something
to balance it out.
And I say, "We got to find
something to sing back
for the girls, you know?"
-♪ Gonna tell her
that I'm sorry ♪
♪ For the pain
that I've caused ♪
♪ I've been listenin'
to your reasoning ♪
♪ It makes no sense at all ♪
-So he's basically
telling Shaggy,
"You don't know what the fuck
you're talking about.
I'm gonna keep my girl.
I'm gonna try, at least."
-The record is really saying
that it's not good to cheat.
It's a moral conversation,
as Sting would say, yes.
-[ Laughs ]
[ Garage door opening ]
-My name is Hans Haedelt.
I was, at the time,
senior director
of A&R at MCA Records.
Two of my favorite pieces
that I still have
from my old memories of MCA
Records are my Shaggy 8x10
and then also this great
little photo of me with Shaggy.
So, the problem
with Shaggy's career,
to the best of my understanding
at the time that I met him,
was that he was
a far bigger star in other areas
around the world than he was
in the United States.
There was a lot riding
on what was going to happen
next in Shaggy's career.
My job became going out to the
studio to listen to the music.
-He showed up here,
walks in with a bag of weed.
"Come on.
Let's get this record going."
And I'm like,
"I don't smoke weed."
[ Laughs ]
-I'm sitting in the studio.
Yes, I was a little bit stoned.
Shaggy and Sting International
left the room,
perhaps to get food,
and "It Wasn't Me" comes on.
I'd not heard that song before.
The vibe was instantaneous.
At that moment, the door opens,
and Sting and Shaggy walk back
in and the music gets shut off.
"What just happened?"
"Yeah, man, you know,
Robert doesn't like that song."
-"Sting and I love it,
but, you know,
we don't think
it's gonna make the record."
-Robert Livingston was Shaggy's
manager and so much more.
-And at that time, Robert was
kind of the man in control
of everything Shaggy.
He called the shots
of what made the record
and what didn't make the record.
-They were not supposed to play
that song for me.
It just happened to be
on the same DAT
that had already been playing.
-And Hans is like, "Look, man,
I ain't no reggae expert,
but this is a hit.
I think you should finish it."
-"That's what we're saying."
[ Laughs ]
You know what I mean?
-Sting took that
as marching orders.
He's not leaving that studio
until that song is finished.
-So, that night,
I just mixed it, and next day,
I'm like, "Take this shit off.
We're putting this on."
And they were kind of
mad as fuck
because the artwork
had been done.
But I didn't give a shit
neither.
It's actually a demo vocal,
what you hear.
The vocals are demo vocals.
-And so, the song
went on the album.
When the label actually heard
the finished proposed album,
the senior executives thought
the album was a pile of junk,
there was not a song on there
that they could release
to radio,
and I should be thankful
that I still had a job.
-Nobody was supportive of any --
you know,
any of the songs
I was really doing.
You know, they didn't even,
like, jump after "Angel" either.
That was just an album track
for them motherfuckers.
-What surprised me --
when they came back
and they said,
"We didn't hear a single.
And we have a great idea.
We want to send you
to Jam and Lewis."
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis
are two of the biggest producers
in the history of music.
And we ended up doing two songs.
One of the songs was a song
called "Dance and Shout."
-Then, of course, the senior-
executive staff were ecstatic
because now they had their hits
from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,
at the tune of probably
$250,000 per track.
-"It's either it's gonna happen
or, if it doesn't,
you'll never get another deal
anywhere again,
because, look, it's reggae.
You're lucky if you get
a second go-around
in anything reggae
in this business."
-Everything was sort of
hanging by a thread.
-Put the record out.
"Dance and Shout" tanked.
Straight out at radio.
It just did not do well.
It didn't perform well.
I'm on the verge of getting
dropped now on this label
because the singles
aren't working.
-There was no impetus
from senior management
to drive this home in any way.
-No resources, no promotion,
no posters.
Nothing.
Record-label bullshit.
-We were tanking.
We were gonna be dropped.
-I sort of expected that my days
were going to be very numbered.
-No one really had an interest
in the project anyway,
'cause I heard
the backroom talk,
you know, "These coconuts."
So I'm like,
"These motherfuckers
don't give a fuck."
-One of the senior
executives said --
and I quote --
"Get this fucking guy
on a cruise ship,
doing limbo lines."
-Um, depression.
[ Laughs ]
Depressing.
It was rough.
And we went on a tour
to support it.
We started from the East Coast
and got on a bus.
-I happened to be
in Los Angeles,
and Shaggy was in Los Angeles
the same night.
And so we decided
to get together for dinner.
It was a pretty somber dinner.
You didn't have to say it
out loud to know
what everyone else was thinking,
and that was, you know,
"This is nearing the end."
One of the biggest struggles
that I saw --
this tremendously
confident artist, Shaggy,
dealing with the internal
struggle of failing.
And, all of a sudden,
one of the people
that worked at MCA
as marketing director
at the time
gets a BlackBerry message.
-Out of nowhere,
there's a deejay out of Hawaii
that started to play
"It Wasn't Me" from the album.
-Alright, here we go today.
Thanks for joining us
at JAM'N 95.7.
My name is Pablo.
In 2000, I was the afternoon
deejay at KIKI.
My job as being a music director
for Hot 93.9 in Honolulu
was procuring music.
-I heard that the deejay
in Hawaii --
he tried to reach out to MCA
to get a copy of the album,
the promo album.
And they basically were like,
"Fuck off.
You know, we're not sending
any more out.
We gave out --"
however many.
So, he wound up grabbing it
off of Napster.
-You know what?
The way you say it
and the way it sounds,
like I did some shady,
underground downloading thing.
Like, I just wanted an edge.
I wanted to be better than every
other radio station in Hawaii.
So that's when I started
scouring the Internet.
I saw Shaggy and I was like,
"You know what?
I'm gonna download that.
It's a new album.
No one's got it yet."
I didn't even get, really,
a chance to listen to it,
because back in the day,
when you download stuff,
you just download it
and you wait
and you just hope you don't hear
that modem sound ever again.
But I threw it on a CD.
And on a Monday,
when I was just driving home,
Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" came on.
And when you listen
to the record,
it's a one-listen record.
It's one of those records
where you're like, "Damn!"
I found myself singing
the damn song
halfway through the song.
-♪ Picture this,
we were both butt-naked ♪
♪ Bangin' on
the bathroom floor ♪
-So, I walked into the studio.
I put it into the CD player,
pressed play,
listened to,
like, the first bar.
Next thing you know,
I started looking to the left,
and that's where
the phone lines were.
And right when
the phone lines --
One started blinking.
Two started blinking.
Three.
And I'm like, "Eh, okay,
I'll get to it.
Let me enjoy the song."
But once the hook came in --
"butt-naked bangin'
on the bathroom floor" --
I looked over to my lines,
and next thing you know,
all six of them
were going off.
"Hot 93.9. Hello?"
"Hey, brother.
Hey, who this right now
on the radio?"
"Oh, my man, it's Shaggy,
'It Wasn't Me.'"
"Oh, thanks, sir. Roger.
Okay, then. Bye."
"Hot 93.9. Hello?"
"Hi. Who's this?"
"It's Pablo." "No, no, no, no.
Who's this on the radio?"
"Oh, it's Shaggy,
'It Wasn't Me.'
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Take care. Bye-bye."
This song reached everybody
on the island of Oahu.
There was so much reaction from
every radio station in Hawaii --
"Can we get this record,
as well?"
The label was, "We don't know
how -- we don't even have it."
I've got the only copy of Shaggy
"It Wasn't Me."
-And, all of a sudden,
he was playing it
10 times
for the night, back-to-back.
-Imagine, we had started a tour
up on the East Coast.
We're coming up to flop shows,
flop shows, flop shows,
flop shows, flop shows,
all the way down to
when we hit the Midwest.
The show the night before --
200, 300 people.
The next show after that is
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
When we leave the hotel
going to the show,
there's police with sirens
and everything.
The amount of people
who are outside
and cannot get into
this fucking venue.
"Are they here for us?"
[ Laughs ]
It's like, "Yo!"
And we played,
and it was fucking pandemonium.
-♪ Honey came in,
and she caught me red-handed ♪
♪ Creeping with
the girl next door ♪
♪ Picture this,
we were both butt-naked ♪
♪ Bangin' on
the bathroom floor ♪
-When we dropped
"It Wasn't Me,"
we played it four times
back-to-back.
We couldn't hear the song --
how loud
they were singing this record.
And we're like, "What the fuck?"
-It started blowing up
and started coming up
the East Coast
and just never stopped.
Just never stopped.
-For the first time
and the only real time
in my professional life,
I saw a song that just bubbled
to the top all by itself.
-And the album started selling.
And it started selling.
A half-mill a week in sales.
This is hard copies.
And then, you know,
10 million later -- you know?
"It Wasn't Me."
-Shaggy, Shaggy, Shaggy, Shaggy!
-It almost didn't make it
to the album,
and, oddly enough,
it's what propelled the album
to the 10 million --
There it is.
10 million in sales.
-It was number 1
in almost every country --
I think in every country.
-Then, of course,
after it's selling millions
and millions and millions,
now all of a sudden,
everybody's,
"Yeah, we did great."
You know, all this bullshit,
like as if they did something.
-Nobody at MCA Records
lifted a finger
until it became unstoppable.
-And they chase.
It's been like that
my whole career.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Most records this year.
10 million sold worldwide.
-Broke some records.
-Yeah, it broke some records.
-Oh, yeah.
-It's a first for reggae music
to sell this much record
in such a short space of time.
We started what was a dancehall
revolution at that point.
It's right after that, Sean Paul
came with "Dutty Rock."
All of a sudden,
from major labels,
they were like,
"Oh, this thing
can really sell."
It was that important
to the genre of dancehall.
It just became popular
and popular.
And a new generation
just caught on to it,
and it became this cult.
-It's not just a song anymore.
It's like a cultural thing.
Anytime a politician
gets in trouble now,
"It wasn't me" is the go-to.
"Yeah, it wasn't me.
I did not have sexual relations
with that woman."
You know, that's what they do.
I guess we may have made
a problem a little bit worse.
-The record still sounds fresh
when you listen to it.
The melody is there, I guess.
The groove is there.
People fuck on the side,
they get busted.
That ain't never gonna get old.
-I always brag and say,
11 people bought homes
out of that
and started their lives from
that record, from that album.
-I thought I'd be
a songwriter at most.
Never in my wildest dreams
did I think I'd become a singer.
I had no intention of, you know,
me singing it.
To stand up in front of a crowd,
70,000 people,
and be able to hold out the mic
and have them sing every word
is the coolest feeling
in the world.
It's quite humbling
and honoring.
-Looking back now,
the story of "It Wasn't Me"
is just a series
of happy accidents.
Had I not accidentally heard
the song, who knows?
Would it have been on the album?
No, it wouldn't have been.
Remarkable.
-If it wasn't for Hans,
I would have been like,
"Man, fuck these motherfuckers."
He's the one that said,
"Dude, I think it's a hit.
You should finish it."
That motherfucker right there
and that deejay
who ripped that shit
off of Napster in Hawaii --
I don't know his name
and I never met him,
but thank you, motherfucker!
Good job.
-In the past 20 years, I've yet
to play a song on the radio
that people are like,
"What is this song?
Who is this song by?"
You know?
I was just happy to say,
"Shaggy, 'It Wasn't Me.'"
But if there's one person
who is watching this
that I really want to meet,
I want to meet that guy
who uploaded
Shaggy's "Hot Shot" album.
I just want to know,
how did it get to the Internet?
That's the only question
left unanswered.
-We made something so special
that the world had to stop
and take notice.
It's like, "Who the fuck
are these dancehall guys?"
I got Shaggy from when
I was in Jamaica.
I was this really skinny guy.
My hair was really light.
And they called me
Shaggy like a shaggy dog.
People do think it's Shaggy
from "Scooby-Doo,"
and I just look at them and say,
"Really?" [ Chuckles ]
