Bam Bam

Sister Nancy's 1982 hit was built from borrowed parts, in the best Jamaican tradition. Its instrumental is the Stalag riddim, first heard on Ansell Collins's "Stalag 17", and its chorus follows the melody of "Bam Bam", a 1966 song by Toots and the Maytals. According to the writer Mike Steyels, her immediate spark was hearing Yellowman and Fathead record their own take on the phrase in another studio a few weeks earlier. What happened next is a story about who gets paid. By her account she never once heard the song played in Jamaica after her album One, Two came out, and her producer, who saw how popular it had become abroad, kept that from her. She only grasped its reach after moving to the United States in 1996, when she heard it in the 1998 film Belly. Her daughter later spotted it in a Reebok commercial in 2014, and Sister Nancy finally sought legal advice. After 32 years without royalties, a settlement gave her payment for the last ten years and half the rights to the song. By then "Bam Bam" was everywhere. Billboard called it a strong contender for the most sampled reggae song ever, and it has turned up in well over a hundred tracks. Asked about all those samples, she said none was her favourite, because nobody had asked her to perform it with them in person. Rolling Stone placed it among its 500 greatest songs in 2021. It stands as a landmark for women deejays and a reminder that classics have owners.