The Drake “One Dance” sample is one of the most consequential lifts in 21st-century pop music.
A slowed, pitch-shifted vocal and a cluster of piano chords pulled from a niche corner of the British underground gave Drake, Wizkid, and Kyla the sonic foundation for what became a record-breaking global phenomenon.
Understanding exactly what was borrowed, from whom, and how it was rebuilt illuminates not just a single song but the whole cross-continental machinery behind the biggest hit of 2016.
The Source Material: Kyla and the Crazy Cousinz Remix of ‘Do You Mind’
The sample in “One Dance” is a slowed-down lift of the vocals and chord stabs from a 2008 UK funky house anthem, Kyla’s “Do You Mind,” produced by Crazy Cousinz.
To understand the sample, you first need to understand the original and the genre it came from. In the mid-to-late 2000s, UK funky took over clubs and airwaves with its effervescent and propulsive blend of sounds, fusing house music with elements of genres from across the Black diaspora.
UK funky, also known as Funky House, was an oddly short-lived musical chapter in the UK underground scene, rising from the ashes of a dwindling grime scene and taking inspiration from garage, house, and Afrobeat.
Though it was a stone cold anthem at the height of UK funky’s power, “Do You Mind” originally started out as a bassline tune produced by Errol “Paleface” Reid before he brought his cousin Luke “Flukes” Reid to remix it into a UK funky tune as Crazy Cousinz.
The Crazy Cousinz mix of “Do You Mind” was officially released in 2008, and for two years, funky was the sound of the summer.
Kyla’s “Do You Mind” was released as a digital download in the United Kingdom on 26 January 2009 and peaked at number 48 on the UK Singles Chart. It was a modest chart result for what would prove to be an enduring record.
By late 2009, funky had crossed over into the mainstream, with tracks like the Crazy Cousinz remix of Kyla’s “Do You Mind” making their mark on the UK charts.
Crazy Cousinz is a collective of music producers formed in 2007, consisting of two cousins, Flukes and Paleface, who released the hit song “Funky Anthem” and the majorly influential remix of “Do You Mind” by Kyla.
Kyla Reid (born Kyla Smith on 22 September 1983) is a British singer associated with the UK funky subgenre.
Kyla gave up her music career to start a family and was previously an ESL teacher before Drake’s team came calling and changed everything.
How the Drake ‘One Dance’ Sample Was Cleared and Built
In early 2016, UK funky artist Kyla was first contacted by Drake’s production team regarding the use of her 2008 song “Do You Mind (Crazy Cousinz remix)” in a new Afrobeats and dancehall song with Drake and Nigerian artist Wizkid.
The path to clearance was not entirely smooth on Kyla’s end, at least at first. Kyla described her initial skepticism in an interview with Trevor Nelson on BBC Radio 1Xtra, recalling that when she was told a “huge international star” wanted to sample her tune, she was told it was Drake and replied, “Yeah right!” She added: “We signed papers and I still didn’t believe it. I had a feeling someone was gonna say to me ‘April Fools.'”
Drake brought the idea of sampling “Do You Mind” to Canadian producer Paul Jefferies, known as Nineteen85, who had worked on a bunch of Drake’s biggest hits, including “Hotline Bling,” and turned the sample into a beat.
Nineteen85 later told Billboard magazine about the inspiration: “We were in London a couple of years ago for Wireless Festival, and we kept playing ‘Do You Mind?’ by Kyla, which I sampled on ‘One Dance.’ I wanted to figure out how to create that I-don’t-care-who’s-looking vibe, the vibe of those parties.”
Nineteen85 made the initial track from the “Do You Mind” sample, and then the beat made its way to Pretoria producer DJ Maphorisa, who comes from the South African house subgenre known as amapiano.
DJ Maphorisa himself was characteristically modest about his contribution, telling South African outlet Cliff Central: “We did something small, when I was in LA with Wizkid.
He sent something to Wizkid, because I’m always with Wizkid I just added some few things. Actually I didn’t produce the song. I did [get credit] just a small thing. 40 and Nineteen85 are the main producers.”
Wizkid also did some production work on “One Dance,” as did Drake’s regular producer Noah “40” Shebib.
The Afrobeats and dancehall DNA of the track also came from two African producers: Sarz from Nigeria and DJ Maphorisa from South Africa.
Crazy Cousinz and Kyla received songwriting credits for the sampling of their 2008 UK funky song “Do You Mind.”
The full songwriter credits on “One Dance,” as listed in official metadata, include Aubrey Graham, Ayodeji Balogun, Kyla Smith, Paul Jefferies, Noah Shebib, Errol Reid, Luke Reid, Corey Johnson, and Logan Sama.
What Exactly Was Taken: The Sonic Anatomy of the Sample
A UK funky remix of a Kyla song is the source of the lilting vocal and keyboard stabs that anchor “One Dance.”
The sample is not used transparently or in its original form; it is deliberately altered to fit a different sonic world.
In its final version, “One Dance” plays out as a slower, more sensual take on “Do You Mind,” one that doesn’t belong to any genre in particular.
The drum programming on “One Dance” isn’t really the four-four thump of house music. Instead, it’s a genteel version of the dembow riddim, the beat that has powered virtually every reggaeton record since the genre’s beginning.
The lush piano comes from “Do You Mind,” and so does Kyla’s sampled voice, a ghostly stutter that winds prettily through the track.
That dembow connection is the key rhythmic bridge to dancehall. The dembow rhythm was used a year before Drake’s track in Justin Bieber’s hit “Sorry.”
With roots in reggaeton, the syncopated groove, accompanied by a 4/4 kick drum, was a staple of dancehall hits of the 1990s before Latin artists like Daddy Yankee brought it into the mainstream in the following decade.
The combination is central to the track’s identity. “One Dance” is an R&B song with dancehall and Afrobeats inflections.
The UK funky source supplies the melodic warmth and Kyla’s distinctive vocal texture, while the production team reskins the rhythm section entirely, replacing the four-on-the-floor pulse of the original with the loping, off-kilter dembow that gives “One Dance” its dancehall posture.
The Collaborators: Wizkid, Kyla, and the Transatlantic Web
Drake had met Wizkid one year previously through British grime artist Skepta, to work on a remix of Wizkid’s song “Ojuelegba.”
That prior relationship made Wizkid a natural partner for a song already pulling from Black British and African sonic traditions.
Wizkid is credited on “One Dance” along with Kyla. Kyla’s role is double: she is both the source of the sample and a credited featured artist, her vocal appearing in the song in its sampled, treated form rather than as a newly recorded contribution.
The production of the song was completed in one week and then released in early April 2016 because Drake didn’t want the song to be leaked.
The song was quickly produced and released in early April 2016 and became an international hit, reaching number one in the singles chart in 15 different countries, including the UK, the US, and Drake’s native Canada.
Chart Performance and Streaming Records
“One Dance” was one of two Drake singles released on April 5, 2016, alongside “Pop Style.” Its chart ascent was rapid and historic.
One Dance” gave Drake his first number one as a lead artist on the Billboard Hot 100, as it climbed to the summit on the chart dated May 21, 2016.
One Dance” became the second dancehall song of 2016 to top the Billboard Hot 100, after Rihanna’s “Work,” which also featured Drake.
Drake’s “One Dance” crowned the Billboard Hot 100 for a 10th total week, joining an elite list of singles in the Hot 100’s history to rule for double-digit weeks. The song also made history with 18 weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
“One Dance” and Views combined to give Drake the longest control, among solo males, of both the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 simultaneously with one song and one album: nine weeks.
On the streaming side, the records were equally dramatic. In October 2016, “One Dance” surpassed the total play count of Major Lazer’s “Lean On” to become the most-streamed song of all time on Spotify.
Two months later, it became the first song in history to rack up one billion streams on the streaming service.
Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” eventually surpassed “One Dance” in September 2017 to become Spotify’s most-streamed song ever.
In the United Kingdom, this was the best-selling single of 2016, racking up 1.95 million combined sales, comprising 530,000 downloads and 142 million streams. Billboard named “One Dance” the 2016 Song of the Summer on September 7, 2016.
Why the Sample Matters Beyond the Charts
The once-popular UK funky sound continues to inspire music, with Drake’s “One Dance” in 2016 serving as a notable example of its reach by sampling the Crazy Cousinz remix of “Do You Mind.”
The Drake “One Dance” sample represents something larger than a production choice. When one of the biggest artists on the planet reaches into the archives of a short-lived London underground scene and rebuilds it alongside a Nigerian Afrobeats star and a South African house producer, the track becomes a document of how global Black music genres travel and recombine.
UK funky was never meant for this stage. By 2009, the UK funky sound had become oversaturated and the genre began to decline, with many major artists moving on, as UK funky gave way to the more popular garage genre.
That it resurfaced at the center of the most-streamed song in Spotify history is a testament both to the durability of the music Kyla and Crazy Cousinz made in 2008, and to the restless, genre-agnostic ear that Drake and his production team brought to Views.
The success of “One Dance” allowed Kyla to reboot her career, with guest appearances at a number of 2016 British summer music festivals, including the Wireless Festival.
For Crazy Cousinz, Sarz, and DJ Maphorisa, the song opened international doors that extended well beyond a single credit.
The record remains one of the clearest examples in recent pop history of how a sample, properly cleared, properly rebuilt, and placed in the right cultural moment, can elevate everyone involved.
