Dawn Penn’s ‘No No No’ In Calvin Klein’s 2024 Ad Campaign Featuring Idris Elba

Dawn Penn’s You Don’t Love Me (No No No) is the latest Jamaican song to be used as synchronization music, this time in iconic luxury brand Calvin Klein’s Spring 2024 Collection advertising campaign, which features acclaimed British actor, Idris Elba.

The campaign which began on Tuesday, shows Elba, who was named People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 2018, strutting around the streets of London, in what Calvin Klein describes as the brand’s Classic Trench Coat. 

In the video featuring No No No, the 51 year old exits a building and with hands in pockets, looks into the camera at intervals, peers at a couple kissing in a car, and hands an elderly lady flowers, all whilst he takes his leisurely stroll through a roadway in the city.

“@idriselba in Calvin Klein menswear.​   The trench is the uniform. Discover the new collection…,” Calvin Klein captioned the post.

Penn’s version of You Don’t Love Me (No No No) has been sampled in 24 songs and covered in eight, according to WhoSampled.com.  This includes tracks by Rihanna, Eve, Ghostface Killah, Usher, Alicia Keys and rapper Offset who used it in his song Worth It with Don Toliver, off his Set It Off album.

In December 2021, the legendary Queen of Hip Hop/Soul, and nine-time Grammy award winner Mary J. Blige used the song’s intro in the intro for her own song titled Amazing, featuring DJ Khaled.    The song appeared on the many-time Grammy nominee’s 15th studio album titled Good Morning Gorgeous.

It was also sampled on Hell No Reprise featuring American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, Shenseea, and rapper Missy Elliot for The Color Purple movie soundtrack.

In 2017 Penn had told The Gleaner newspaper that she had written You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No) whilst experiencing what she described as “the painful aftermath of love”.  At the time she had said that “the lyrics came about because I was in love like everyone else and had a broken heart in the process”.

Dawn Penn’s version of You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No) was first recorded for Studio One in 1967, but according to her, iconic music producer Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd, had requested that she record the track again in 1968, as the first recording had an error.

She again recorded the song for King Jammys in 1990, then in 1992 for Trojan, and then in 1993 for Steelie and Clevie, after  Dodd had asked the production duo “to do an album project for Heartbeat, celebrating Studio One’s 35 years in the music industry”.

However, according to Penn, after the 1993 version of the song produced by Steelie and Clevie became a hit, eight people had come forward claiming that they were the authors of the song.

Whilst she had not elaborated on which persons had claimed the song in the interview, research shows that she had indeed sampled the hook and interpolated other lyrics written by American music legend Bo Diddley, as well as used rhyme schemes from his 1955 Jazz/Blues song She’s Fine, She’s Mine.

Penn had, nevertheless, pointed out that there was a significant difference in the song’s structure between the Studio One original on which she sings every eight bars of the music, and the Steelie and Clevie version where her voice appears at every four bars, with the refrain of deejay U-Roy’s Wake The Town, included in it.

The Steelie and Clevie version of the song had peaked at No. 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in April 1994, and had also entered the UK Charts at No. 9 before ascending to No. 3.

On May 13, 2022 the song was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) after it sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.

You Don’t Love Me (No No No) also has a dubplate version, which Penn had said she created, which has been used by many sound system selectors to win clashes.