Dancehall Veteran Cutty Ranks’ ‘Dame Tu Cosita’ Nears The 3.5 Billion Mark On YouTube
Veteran Dancehall deejay Cutty Ranks’ Dame Tu Cosita, a Reggaeton collaboration with Panamanian El Chombo, is nearing the 3.5 billion mark in terms of YouTube views where it stands firm as one of the top 20 most-viewed songs in the history of the video-sharing platform.
The Limb by Limb artist’s vocals are dominant on the track’s hook. In the song, Cutty Ranks, repeats the phrase Dame Tu Cosita (which is Spanish, for “give me your little thing”), over and over.
In a Jamaica Star article published in 2019, Cutty Ranks had explained that even though he is listed as a “featured artist” alongside El Chombo, he was the author of the original song which he wrote in English, and which the Panamanian DJ and producer translated to Spanish and later released in 1997.
“I met Rodney Clarke, who goes by the name El Chombo, in the ‘90s in Panama, and I wrote a song originally called El Cosita in English and then he translated it into Spanish. It was my first Spanish song,” the Dominate singer told The Star at the time.
Cutty Ranks, who turned 56 in February, said he lost contact with El Chombo, but that a song called Cosita Mix was included in the 1998 album Cuentos de la Cripta Vol. 2 ( Tales from the Crypt Vol. 2).
In 2018, Dame Tu Cosita was catapulted into the spotlight after a ArtNoux, a video game animator from Madagascar, which took the song and used it as the soundtrack for his animated alien and posted it on Dailymotion, where he labelled it “Alien Popoy possessed by Reggaeton vibration!” and crediting El Chombo for the music, erroneously excluding the Jamaican.
A subsequent dance challenge blew up the internet and shot the song up the Billboard charts after which French label Juston Records contacted El Chombo and ordered an expanded version of the track.
“The label also got the rights to Artnoux’s video and asked him to expand that as well after which “Ultra jumped into the deal and licensed the track worldwide” according to Billboard.
According to The Star, “in a May 2018 interview with Billboard, just after the song entered the Hot 100 chart at number 81 with 10.4 million US streams, El Chombo made no mention of Cutty Ranks’ contribution to the song”.
In the Billboard article, El Chapo had said that the original “Dame Tu Cosita” was a 50-second intro to his 1998 album Cuentos de la Cripta II. He said that in 2002, he had released Cuentos de la Cripta Remixes, which was the version he worked on with Juston Records which was extended it, with two new verses.
However, the Who Say Mi Done artist and former Penthouse Records heavyweight sprang into action, retained an attorney and “struck a partial deal, which allowed the song to stay on the video sharing platform”, according to The Star.
According to the Johanesburg-based The Bullrushes, one billion views on YouTube can earn about US$8 million (J$1.2 billion).
Cutty, whose given name is Phillip Thomas, was a butcher prior to his Dancehall career. He started out deejaying on sound systems in the 1980s and joined Donovan Germain’s Penthouse label in 1990 where he collaborated with Reggae legends such as Marcia Griffiths, Dennis Brown, Wayne Wonder and Beres Hammond.
Cutty Ranks’ most successful album, The Stopper, was released in 1991. It included songs such as Hand Grenade, The Cutter, Pon Pause, Mi aim, Original Rude Boy Style, One day Badness and the title track The Stopper.
His intro “Six Million Ways to Die”, from the hit song Who Seh Mi Done, which was on his 1996 album Six Million Ways to Die, has been sampled by several American artists including Funk Master flex in Six million ways to die. It was also copied by Snoop Dogg in Serial Killer, Method Man and Redman in How High (Original); Joey Bada in Survival Tactics; Mos Def in Mathematics and Dr Dre and Ice Cube in Natural Born Killaz.
Cutty’s Six Million Ways to Die album comprised 15 tracks including The Return, Hitman, Time to Die, Push Out Oonuh Head (DJ Line Up), Rude Bwoy Game, Undertaker, One Gun Two Gun, Bush Tonic and Waste a Time, featuring Shaggy.