KANYE WEST BREEDED NEW LIFE TO THE CAREER OF THE THEN UNPAID BUT THE FIRST FEMALE DJ/MC OF DANCEHALL

Let me first say that without Dancehall Reggae, Hip-hop would never have existed. In the late '60s and early '70s,  many Jamaicans migrated to the US for the prospects of a better life. As they migrated, they took with them the culture of the Jamaican sounds and neighborhood music festivals. Some of these migrants and their offsprings later became the pioneering fathers of Hip hop in the US. These are pioneering DJs like Cool Herk, African Bambata, and others. This point is important to note in order to fully understand this story.

During the early beginnings of Dancehall Reggae in Jamaica, in the '60s and '70s, Dancehall Reggae was a mostly male-dominated industry. Female DJs and artists were discouraged from pursuing their ambitions in this musical field, but this never stopped the legendary and first female dancehall artist from taking steps to further her musical ambition.

In 1976 Sista Nancy recorded her legendary tune 'Bam Bam'  with the Stalag riddim(backing track) by Ansell Collins, which was part of her then debut 'One, Two' album. She recreated the chorus from the 1966 sound bam bam by the Maytals and Toots. At the time the artist was a meer teen just aspiring to hear her voice on the radio, this was according to her when she was interviewed at the US-based radio station, Hot '97 ' in 2017. She explained the meaning behind the song and went on to say that many who have translated the lyrics always get them wrong and she went further by explaining the meaning of what a bam bam, and said it meant ' she a woman was coming to attack the male-dominated dancehall reggae scene despite its bias. Bam bam to her meant coming to attack.

In the interview, Sista Nancy by then in her mid 50's claimed that from the time she began her dancehall career to the time she stopped pursuing it in Jamaica, she and other Dancehall artists were unpaid and did it only for recognition. This was one of the unfortunate side effects of dancehall's open use of riddims or samples of early reggae tunes and other genres because the original creators of the music rarely got compensation. Likewise, singers would never get royalties even when their songs were,' Hits '. This changed in 1993 as Jamaica strengthened its copyright laws, and artists were able to release their music internationally in countries where it was easier to win copyright disputes.

Sista Nancy relocated to New Jersey in the US in the early nineties, where she left the music industry for many years taking care of her family while working as an accountant. In 2016 she returned to music due in part to renewed interests after her song,' Bam Bam ' was sampled by Kanye West, and she has been touring to today.

According to her while at the Hot 97 interview, she claimed to have never heard her song bam bam being played at the radio stations in Jamaica. She went on to say that she first knew of the song getting attention from international radio stations in 1996 when she had already relocated to the US, and said in Jamaica another song in her album was the one that got airplay. The album went on to top the Jamaican chart back when it was released. Despite the success of the album, Bam Bam was the 10th song on the album and thus was hardly getting played, this was what she brought out while at the interview. Even though it was getting aired massively in the US then, she was not receiving any benefits. She also remarked that she was part of dancehall for 32 years without getting paid.

She claimed that in 2014 she heard the song sampled in a Reebok commercial and that was when she began pursuing it legally. The people who approved this, who were people she knew from her past while in the music industry, settled with her outside court. She got 50%  of the rights to her catalog.

Two years after the case was settled, the song was used in the US movie,' The Interview ', and months later Kanye West sampled it in his song, ' Famous ' from his album, ' Life of Pablo '. This breathed life into Nancy's career and slowly she returned to music.

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