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Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ remixed for Emirates NBD

Published:Wednesday | July 10, 2019 | 12:19 AMKimberley Small/Staff Reporter
Shaggy poses in the press room with the award for Best Reggae Album for ‘44/876’ at the 61st annual Grammy Awards at the Staples Center on Sunday, February 10, 2019, in Los Angeles.
Shaggy poses in the press room with the award for Best Reggae Album for ‘44/876’ at the 61st annual Grammy Awards at the Staples Center on Sunday, February 10, 2019, in Los Angeles.

Emirates NBD, one of the largest banking groups in the Middle East, is on a fraud-awareness campaign, an admirable and necessary action as scamming rears its formidable head. However, what’s intriguing about this particular campaign is that the bank enlisted the help of one Jamaica’s biggest, globally revered entertainers, Shaggy.

Last week, the financial services company twice posted a two-minute-long commercial on their official Instagram account, featuring a rather amusing remix to Shaggy and Rikrok’s 2000 global smash hit, It Wasn’t Me. Singing his woes from Rikrok’s perspective, a young customer finds his bank account cleared out, after responding to a ‘Dear Customer’ email requesting account information, an email that appeared to be coming from the bank itself. The older bank manager retorts in Shaggy’s style declaring innocence, assuring the troubled customer that ‘it wasn’t me.’

It Wasn’t Me is regarded as Shaggy’s breakthrough into the pop music world. Upon its release, the song topped charts in Australia, Austria, France, Ireland, the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The song depicts Rikrok asking advice after getting caught cheating on his girlfriend, and Shaggy responding with the age-old male mantra ‘deny everything’.

Representatives from Shaggy’s camp declined to comment but did reveal they granted permission for the hit song’s financial remix, which seems like a good move for both entities. To date, combining the two posts made on Emirates NBD profile, the first on June 28 and a repeat on June 30, the commercial amassed over 30,000 views and generated hundreds of comments. Many comments on the commercial were positive, declaring it to be creative, impressive and perhaps the best ad they had ever seen.

As his international introduction continues to impress globally, Shaggy is still hitting the studio. He recently released a brand new single called You featuring 19 year-old Canadian singer, Alexander Stewart. You fuses elements of EDM, tropical house, dancehall and Afrobeat, a go-to contemporary combo. But that isn’t the only feature Shaggy is banking on. The dancehall star told Rolling Stone recently that every hit record he’s ever had features an unknown artiste, just like It Wasn’t Me.

“The colour in his voice, the tone, it complemented the instrumentation. And then a little superstition got in there too, because every hit record [I’ve had] is from singers who are young, unknown. Like when I did It Wasn’t Me, Rikrok was this young, unknown singer that no one knew; Rayvon and ‘Angel’ was the same. So I just think I have luck with that, so with Alexander I was like, ‘yeah, let’s rock with it’,” he said.

kimberley.small@gleanerjm.com