Shaggy, RikRok’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ Goes Quadruple Platinum In The UK
Shaggy and RikRok’s megahit It Wasn’t Me is now certified quadruple platinum in the United Kingdom, over 22 years after its release.
According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the song was issued a fourth Brit Certified Platinum Award on Friday (April 21), after it surpassed the sales and streaming equivalent of over 2.4 million units sold in the UK, as measured by The Official Charts Company. It was certified triple Platinum in September 2018.
First released in November 2000, It Wasn’t Me was the first single from Shaggy’s fifth studio album, Hot Shot, released under MCA Records. The song became his first to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, after an earlier hit, Boombastic, peaked at No. 3 in 1995.
On the UK Singles Chart, it marked Shaggy’s third No. 1, after Oh Carolina, which topped the chart in 1993, and Boombastic, which also peaked at No. 1 in 1995.
It Wasn’t Me is also certified 3X Platinum in Australia, Platinum in Belgium, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, and Gold in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.
How ‘It Wasn’t Me’ Was Created
In a VICE documentary about the song, Shaggy had said that even though Dancehall was not yet mainstream at the time, he wanted his next album to be from that genre. So, he roped in young songwriter RikRok whom he described as ‘quick,’ to strategically write records that were fit for airplay.
“My aim was to write adult content without being explicit. You have to have enough English in the song to grab people. Now you need to bring it back to the authenticity, straight hardcore Dancehall… The concept of the song is: this guy is in problems. I am the little devil player, saying: ‘It wasn’t you.’ The record is basically saying that it’s not good to cheat; a moral conversation as Sting would say,” he explained.
Shaggy and RikRok came up with the melodies, and the producer Sting International, who also produced Mr. Boombastic and Oh Carolina, brought in the idea of the intro being a little skit and the last verse which formed ‘the apology’ to appease female listeners. According to Shaggy, they all knew the song was going to be ‘something special’ as they were keeling over with laughter while coming up with the lyrics.
As for the hook, Shaggy told Vlad TV that it was an Eddie Murphy joke from his 1987 Standup Comedy RAW , that gave birth to the line “It wasn’t me.”
“The thing about It Wasn’t Me is that the subject matter is so relatable; it’s either you’re banging, you know somebody is banging or you wish you were banging, some banging going on,” Shaggy added, which was the essence of that part of Murphy’s routine.
Rejected
The VICE documentary noted that when Shaggy recorded his Hot Shot album, the label dismissed it as a throw-away album with “no hits.”
According to Shaggy, after his management and record label initially rejected It Wasn’t Me as ‘crap’ and refused to let him release it, he tried to give the song away to artists like Wayne Wonder and the duo Tanto Metro and Devonte.
“There’s a group called Tanto Metro and Devonte. I gave it to them when my manager didn’t want me to do it. And they recorded it,” he told Inside Edition in 2021.
Shaggy added that he had also asked Notch from the Born Jamericans and even No Letting Go artist Wayne Wonder. “I believed in it that much, that I was trying to give it to somebody. It ended up coming right back to me when [director of the record label A&R] Hans [Haedelt] [heard it] and said, ‘Hey, I think this is a hit.’ And I’m like, ‘Man, this is what we’ve been trying to tell him,” he noted.
It was Hans Haedelt, a former MCA Records senior director, who accidentally heard the demo tape, and declared that the song would be a hit. And, although Shaggy’s then-manager Robert Livingston, had ordered it pulled from the album as he disliked it, Hans recommended that the three men complete the song and add it to the list.
“It Wasn’t Me wasn’t even released as a single,” VICE said. “But a series of happy accidents, some illegal downloading, and sheer determination, propelled ‘It Wasn’t Me’ to become one of the first viral crossover hits.”
Executives at MCA Records had come in for a barrage of criticisms, in the documentary, for not being able to recognize a hit song. According to Hans “when the label heard the finished proposed album, the senior executives thought the album was a pile a 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 at MCA records lifted a finger – until it became unstoppable,” he stated.
As fate was to have it, a radio disc jockey, Pablo Sato from Hawaii, snatched an online copy of the album from Napster, after his request for a copy was declined by MCA. It was then that the track skyrocketed to global popularity, as radio stations all over the US bombarded the airwaves with the song.
Later that year (2001), Shaggy again went to No. 1 on the US Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart with Angel, another track from the Hot Shot album.
The album peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and UK Albums charts.
It is currently certified 6X Platinum in the US, but as of March 2023, the album has sold over 8 million units nationwide.
In the UK, Hot Shot is certified 3X Platinum for sales exceeding 900,000 units.