Reggae artist Shaggy seems to always find a way to stay relevant. The dancehall star is currently sitting pretty on international charts with his latest single, "I Need Your Love," featuring Mohombi, Faydee, and Costi.
When choosing Collaborators, Shaggy says the record usually dictate the featured artists, but one experience didn't go too well.
"I do the record and let the record dictate the collaborator. Most of the people I work with aren't famous. 'It Wasn't Me' had Rikrok. Of all my hits, Janet Jackson was the only big star," Shaggy told Idolator. "We did our vocals separate on 'Luv Me, Luv Me.' She wasn't even there the same time I was for the video. She didn'?t want anything to do with the record, so I ended up doing the record myself."
"Luv Me, Luv Me" was first released in July (1998) as a collaboration with Janet Jackson, however it was re-recorded in 2000 and the re-recorded version was released as the third single from his multi-platinum album, Hot Shot, in 2001.
Shaggy further explained: It was a great song. It was produced by [Jimmy] Jam & [Terry] Lewis, which are her people but I think it was just produced to be an album track. So Janet just did it because it?s just part of the album. Nobody thought it would be a single. The [How Stella Got Her Groove Back] soundtrack came out when the movie came out, and radio just picked my song. Remember, Mary J. Blige had the first single off the album. Her record just didn?'t connect.
?Luv Me Luv Me? just connected. And at that point, they were faced with a situation where it?s a single, but we don'?t have single rights from Janet. So what are we gonna do? You gotta remember too, it wasn?'t available for sale but it became a number one radio hit and the album sold platinum because people wanted '?Luv Me, Luv Me.'? There were no single rights. I think we ended up cutting another version with Samantha Cole. We shot two videos.
No telling how much bigger this song would of been of Janet would have support it!
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