It Wasn't Me (3:47)

“It Wasn’t Me” is a 2000 number one hit song by reggae artist Shaggy, featuring Ricardo “RikRok” Ducent. It achieved a huge success in many countries, topping the charts in the US, France, UK, the Netherlands, Australia and Ireland.

The song was originally never intended to be released as a single, MCA Records wanted “Dance and Shout” to be the first single released from the Hot Shot album and didn’t offer other tracks to DJs. Hawaiian DJ Pablo Sato downloaded the album from “a Napster-like MP3 site he won’t name” and discovered it “was the album’s standout cut. ” He played the song on the radio the next day. “The phone lines lit up right away. Within a couple of days, it was our number-one requested song.”[1]

The lyrics depict one man (Rikrok) asking his friend (Shaggy) what to do after his girlfriend caught him with another woman. Shaggy’s advice is to deny everything with the phrase “It wasn’t me”, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Two versions of the song and video exist: the radio and television edit version replace the lyric “Picture this; we were both butt-naked banging on the bathroom floor” with “Picture this; we were both caught making love on the bathroom floor.”

The song is particularly famous on the Case Western Reserve University campus for being played excessive amounts of times on the jukebox in the Leutner Commons Cafe.



The song was Shaggy’s first number-one hit in the U.S., and the follow-up, “Angel,” also reached number one.