Chaka Demus and Pliers’ ‘Murder She Wrote’ Makes Billboard’s “50 Best Song Interpolations”
Chaka Demus and Pliers’ 1992 hit Murder She Wrote which featured in American singer Omarion’s hit song Post to Be, has been dubbed among the “50 Best Song Interpolations of the 21st Century” by Billboard. Lines from the opening verse of Murder She Wrote as well as the hook “murder she wrote”, were interpolated in the 2014 song.
Post To Be, which peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified 3X Platinum in the US, had also featured Chris Brown and Jhené Aiko, whose memorable, raunchy one-liner: “I might let your boy chauffeur me, but he gotta eat the b–ty like groceries,” might not find favor among many Jamaicans.
Recently Billboard, in commemorating what it described as “the art of the interpolation at its most successful”, listed in no specific order, its 50 picks for the best examples of the form from the 21st century, which it said “crossed genres and generations to revive old classics and make new ones”.
“The entire “Post to Be” pre-chorus swipes the melody and rhythm from the classic “Murder She Wrote” “I know this little girl, her name is Maxine…” section,” Billboard noted in describing Omarion’s song from his fourth studio album, Sex Playlist.
“But Chris Brown’s guest verse takes it one step further, tracing back the roots of the Omarion-fronted West Coast anthem to the Caribbean by name-dropping Chaka Demus and Pliers’ redefining dancehall smash: “Murder she wrote/You wanna know how I know what I know?” Billboard added.
Post to Be has so far racked up close to 800 million views on YouTube.
In comparison, Murder She Wrote, from Chaka Demus and Pliers’ 1993 album, Tease Me, spent 17 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 57 in 1993.
It also reached No. 27 on the United Kingdom charts in 1994. According to Billboard, it introduced a new style of dancehall rooted in the performers’ native Kingston, Jamaica to the US mainstream.
Produced by the iconic musical duo Sly and Robbie on the infectious Bam-Bam rhythm, it sold more than one million copies globally, and propelled Chaka Demus and Pliers to international stardom.
Murder She Wrote, Billboard explained, also inspired additional lifts via countless other hip-hop and reggaetón hits, such as French Montana’s Freaks and Daddy and Yankee’s “Que Tire Pa’ ‘Lante.
In late 2019, they were back in the news following an endorsement from British actress Angela Lansbury, two weeks shy of her 94th birthday.
Lansbury had, for the first time, heard the song, which was named after the long-running television series of the same name, in which she starred decades ago and said she was “thrilled to be a part of Reggae” after, radio personality CBC radio show host Tom Power played the Dancehall track for her listening pleasure.
The television series “Murder, She Wrote” was highly popular on Jamaican television in the 1980s and was led by Lansbury who played the role of mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. It ran for 12 seasons between 1984 and 1996 and saw Lansbury being nominated for 10 Golden Globes and 12 Emmy Awards for her acting on the show.
The title sparked the name of the legendary song whose lyrics centered on a female who seemingly committed abortion. Back then, Chaka Demus told The Star tabloid that Angela’s response to the song, gave him “a great feeling” and that he had been a fan of the show.
Chaka Demus had also said that the song title came about because Pliers “was fooling around a girl named Maxine” who later informed him that she was carrying his child.
“Him wait nine months, 10 months and no baby can’t come. So me say well this is ‘murder she wrote’ and so Pliers go and do a song with that title for producer Harry J,” Chaka had said.
He said at the time that he had originally recorded his part of the song for producer Bobby Digital, after which the two songs were combined and recorded for Sly Dunbar.