It wasn’t the me-aning.
Shaggy, 54, told People that fans have long misunderstood the sentiment behind his 2000 sing-along smash hit “It Wasn’t Me.”
“It was a big misconception with that song because that song is not a cheating song. It’s an anti-cheating song. It’s just that nobody listened to the record to the end,” the Jamaican reggae rapper claimed last week.
The song starts with singer Rik Rok telling Shaggy that his girlfriend caught him cheating with the girl next door.
Rik Rok then asks Shaggy for advice on what to do. He suggests his pal deny wrongdoing.
“But she caught me on the counter (It wasn’t me) / Saw me bangin’ on the sofa (It wasn’t me),” the lyrics go.
Shaggy told People: “There’s a part in the record where it’s a conversation between two people and you have one guy, which is me at that point, giving that bad advice, like, ‘Yo, bro, how could you get caught? Just tell her, ‘It wasn’t me,”’ he explained.
“And then at the end, the guy says, ‘I’m going to tell her that I’m sorry for the pain that I’ve caused. I’ve been listening to your reasoning, it makes no sense at all. Going to tell her that I’m sorry for the pain that I’ve caused. You might think that you’re a player, but you’re completely lost.’”
Shaggy claims “nobody hears that part” and just sings along to “it wasn’t me,” thereby missing the intended meaning.
“It’s an anti-cheating song,” he continued. “No one ever really buys into that, and I keep explaining it to people. Then, they go listen to it back and be like, ‘Oh dude, I totally missed that.’”
The Post has contacted a rep for Shaggy for comment.
“It Wasn’t Me” was the first single on Shaggy’s fifth studio album, “Hot Shot,” in 2000.
It’s his highest-charting song to date in several countries, including the US, as well as the best-selling single of 2001 in the UK, selling over 1.15 million copies.