Denise Belfon ‘elated’ as Drake samples hit song ‘Work’

NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Cana­di­an rap­per Drake has now joined the list of en­ter­tain­ers to sam­ple Denise “Saucy Wow” Bel­fon’s icon­ic song Work, and she is elat­ed. She told Guardian Me­dia her phone has been buzzing non­stop, and some fans are even hop­ing the two get the chance to share the stage.

The five-time Gram­my Award-win­ning rap­per re­leased three al­bums on Fri­day, Maid of Hon­or, Ice­man and Habibti. The sam­ple of the so­ca track can be heard near­ing the end of track sev­en, BBW, on the Maid of Hon­or al­bum.

T&T fans took to so­cial me­dia ear­ly on Fri­day morn­ing to ex­press both their shock and ex­cite­ment up­on hear­ing Bel­fon’s icon­ic “Put yuh back in it” line.

Sev­er­al en­ter­tain­ers have sam­pled the song over the years, in­clud­ing Ja­maican dance­hall singer Shenseea and US rap­per Megan Thee Stal­lion in their 2022 song Lick. French DJ David Guet­ta al­so remixed it dur­ing a set at the pop­u­lar EDM fes­ti­val To­mor­row­land in Bel­gium. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in 2020, the Put Yuh Back In It chal­lenge led to the song go­ing vi­ral yet again on so­cial me­dia.

Asked if she ever an­tic­i­pat­ed the 1998 track be­com­ing this ma­jor decades lat­er, Bel­fon laugh­ing­ly ad­mit­ted: “Nev­er.”

Ex­plain­ing that she record­ed the hit song in the stu­dio in just one take, she said it was at a time when she was just be­ing free, cre­ative and hap­py.

“And now this 28-year-old song is still liv­ing on. It has been remixed, re­done, sung over in oth­er lan­guages, dif­fer­ent DJs all over the world… It has over 8,000 remix­es world­wide.”

But still, this one was spe­cial. On Drake sam­pling the song, she said, “I feel won­der­ful, elat­ed and ex­cit­ed,” re­call­ing that she had been in dis­be­lief when she was first told about the project ahead of its re­lease.

“It was a con­ver­sa­tion with my at­tor­ney and my pub­lish­ers about the dif­fer­ent projects hap­pen­ing at the time, and they men­tioned Drake and I was like, ‘What? Re­peat that, please.’” And even af­ter more than two rep­e­ti­tions, she was still in shock.

“I said I still need­ed to see this (be re­leased) to be­lieve it.”

And so said, so done. She woke up to a flood of mes­sages and missed calls on Fri­day, not know­ing the al­bum was out. “My phone just keeps buzzing,” she said.

She al­so sought to as­sure fans that “things were dealt with prop­er­ly and legal­ly,” as some have been ques­tion­ing whether the sam­ple was cleared. “My fans want to see me win and I am very grate­ful for the type of fans that I have. They al­ways want to see me get my flow­ers.”

She sees her­self as a cul­tur­al am­bas­sador as she con­tin­ues to pro­mote T&T and its cul­ture. “Every­thing I do is for my cul­ture and Caribbean peo­ple and I’m a force to be reck­oned with. It’s so up­lift­ing to be a part of projects like these to see oth­er artistes re­spect and ad­mire my work.”

She added, “‘Nuff re­spect to Drake and his team, and al­so to my team for mak­ing every­thing pos­si­ble and mak­ing it great.”

The track, BBW, and the al­bum, Maid of Hon­or, are avail­able on all dig­i­tal mu­sic-stream­ing plat­forms.

Some fans have said they want to see both singers on stage to­geth­er per­form­ing it, or for Bel­fon to be fea­tured in the song’s mu­sic video. And she had just one word to say when asked if she would be open to that: “Def­i­nite­ly.”