Sister Nancy Talks New Documentary & Why Jay-Z’s 2017 ‘Bam Bam’ Sample Is Her Favorite: ‘He Did the Right Thing, Everybody Else Was Cheap’ 

A small implicit 40 years ago, Sister Nancy — wide considered the archetypal pistillate dancehall DJ — released a opus that would transcend genre, her location state of Jamaica and clip itself: “Bam Bam.” 

Built astir a illustration of Ansell Collins’ “Stalag 17” riddim, “Bam Bam” is arguably the astir sampled and recognizable dancehall opus successful music history. From Jay-Z‘s “Bam” and Ye’s “Famous” to Ms. Lauryn Hill’s “Lost Ones” and Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts,” Sister Nancy’s commanding timbre — arsenic good arsenic the song’s infectious melody and alluring brass — has proven irresistible to generations of musicians crossed genres and regions. In 2024, Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure, connected which Sister Nancy is some featured (“The French 75”) and sampled (“Water Slide”), earned a Grammy information for medium of the year. 

Sister Nancy’s breakthrough deed initially appeared connected her 1982 debut album, One, Two, garnering acold much notoriety internationally than successful Jamaica. Though not a illustration deed upon its release, the opus has grown into an indisputable classical astir the world, a perennial philharmonic announcement of summer’s arrival. Since 1991, erstwhile Luminate began electronically tracking euphony sales, “Bam Bam” has garnered implicit 185.4 cardinal authoritative on-demand U.S. streams and 329,000 integer downloads. Sister Nancy relocated to New Jersey successful 1996 — and didn’t enactment retired different medium until 2007’s Sister Nancy Meets Fireproof — but the undying bequest of “Bam Bam” helped power respective caller generations of pistillate dancehall DJs, including icons similar Lady Saw (now Minister Marion Hall), Macka Diamond, Spice and Shenseea. By 2016, she retired from her accounting occupation to instrumentality to the signifier and her pursuit of music. 

A fewer decades removed from the merchandise of “Bam Bam,” Sister Nancy, 63, yet seized the accidental to archer her singular communicative connected her ain terms, resulting successful a caller documentary titled Bam Bam: The Story of Sister Nancy. Written and directed by Oya Media Group laminitis Alison Duke, the documentary follows the arc of Sister Nancy’s beingness and career, culminating successful her victorious conflict to triumph backmost years of unpaid royalties owed to unauthorized samples, done circuit performances, interviews, reenactments and archival footage. The film, an authoritative enactment astatine the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, is yet different innovative measurement guardant by Sister Nancy connected behalf of each women successful dancehall, a carnal abstraction and philharmonic genre that tin beryllium flagrantly misogynistic. 

“If it’s mine, I americium going to combat for it,” she stresses to Billboard. “It’s either I triumph oregon lose, but I person to try. And I implore each women to bash the aforesaid thing. If it’s conscionable sitting determination and you haven’t claimed it, you’re going to suffer it. And I’m not going to lose.” 

Earlier this year, Sister Nancy teamed up with iconic dub euphony shaper Mad Professor for her newest album, Armageddon. The eight-track offering arrived connected Sept. 12, a fewer months earlier the dancehall innovator is acceptable to header The Brooklyn Monarch connected Dec. 11. 

Below, Sister Nancy speaks with Billboard astir her caller documentary, wherefore she “really appreciated” the mode Jay-Z went astir sampling “Bam Bam” and her hopes for the genre’s existent iteration.

When did the thought of a documentary archetypal travel about? 

My longtime cause was insisting that I constitute a book, and I was like, “Mi nuh person clip for it. Mi nuh constitute nary book!” Then helium said I should springiness idiosyncratic the accidental to constitute astir me, and mi seh, “Who? W...