How Popcaan Masterminded The Biggest Dancehall Song Of 2020

Lockdown producer Dane Ray has revealed that the Unruly Boss Popcaan was the mastermind who initiated the connection with Koffee helping to bring to fruition, what turned out to be the biggest Dancehall song of 2020.

Speaking during an interview with hosts Jaii Frais and Chevi on the Let’s Be Honest podcast, the 28-year-old, who produced Popcaan’s hit Numbers Don’t Lie from his 2019 Vanquish mixtape, said not only was he instrumental in getting Koffee’s attention, but that the St. Thomas native had envisioned that a Ray and Koffee combination would give Jamaica another masterpiece.

“Yuh si when wi do Numbers Don’t Lie, Poppy always a tell mi seh: yow yuh si di energy and di vibes weh yuh have – caw Poppy is a yute weh always a encourage yuh – him tell mi straight seh: ‘yuh si if you an Koffee collaborate’ – worse him know me is a man weh pree international… him a seh ‘Koffee, Koffee, Koffee’”.

“One week him just link mi.  Caw him seh it to mi one time and di odda time him seh it to mi, him a seh ‘no worry yuhself’.  Less dan three day, mi si Koffee forward a di studio,” Dane Ray explained.

The Ocho Rios native, who is also the producer of Rygin King’s hit single Tuff, added “and di energy did just right and mi play some beats and shi start record a different song and in di middle a di song shi a seh yes man, shi lov it.   Voice a next one now and she start vibe dis and seh: ‘where will we go?’ A hit!  A hit!  I was confident it was gonna be something special.”

Dane Ray, after much prodding and probing from the two pundits to state what genre predominates on the Lockdown beat, acknowledged that the song was Dancehall.

Lockdown was the number one streamed song out of Jamaica for 2020.

To date, the song’s music video, in which Dane Ray also made an appearance as Koffee’s front seat passenger, and which also featured Popcaan, Skillibeng, and Dre Island, has racked up more than 50 million views on YouTube.

Released in July last year, Lockdown shot to a million views mark on YouTube after just 48 hours, making it the first single from a Reggae artist to get to that mark in such a short period of time.   It also trended at number one on the local charts for several weeks.

Apart from high streaming numbers, the song has been copping awards, among them the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) Image Award for Outstanding International Song and more recently International Reggae and World Music Awards (IRAWMA) Awards for the Best Song and Outstanding International Song.

Koffee won the Outstanding International Song award ahead of African Afro-beats artists Davido and Tiwa Savage and her compatriot Buju Banton, who received a nomination for his song Blessed, and who along with Koffee, scored a double nomination in the same category for their collaboration Pressure (remix).   Koffee also copped the awards for Best Female Vocalist; as well as the Peter Tosh Award for Recording Artist of the Year.

Lockdown also influenced Dane Ray’s copping Jamaica’s Prime Minister’s National Youth Award For Excellence, in the category of Arts and Culture last year.

The beatmaker, whose given name is Waldane Hampton, is a past student of Munroe College.  The former national under-17 striker also represented Munroe College in the DaCosta Cup schoolboy football competition.

Following graduation from high school, Dane Ray, who says music is rooted in his family, spent a year at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts where he studied visual arts and voice, but left the programme prematurely, to start his music career as an artist.

He later ventured into music production by learning how to build his own riddims and produce his own songs, after realizing that established producers were unwilling to accommodate him and other upcoming artists.

Listen to the full Let’s Be Honest episode below.