Who Gon Stop Me

Album: Watch The Throne (2011)
Charted: 44
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Songfacts®:

  • Production team The Jugganauts, who comprise R&B artist Verse Simmonds and Producer Sham "Sak Pase" Joseph, provided a tune heavily inspired by the UK style of electronic dance music called dubstep for this Watch The Throne track.
  • Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in London, England in the late 1990s. Based on the drum 'n' bass and the two-step sound, dubstep tracks are driven by bass and sub-bass, typically around 140 beats per minute. They usually sound fairly dark, with lots of reverb added to create a sinister sound. Since 2010 artists such as Magnetic Man, Katy B and Chase & Status have been regular visitors to the higher end of the UK singles charts with dubstep tracks. Dubstep influenced tunes have also been recorded by various American artists such as Snoop Dogg ("Snoop Dogg Millionaire") and Britney Spears ("Hold It Against Me").
  • The origins of the song lay in a call from Bu Thiam, Def Jam's VP of A&R, to submit tracks for Watch The Throne. Simmonds told MTV News he and his production partner immediately went to work. "What we did is, we locked in a week, we just went crazy on everything Jay and Kanye," he said. "I remember telling Sham, I was like, 'Yo, I think this dubstep stuff is going to be the next new flavor that everybody gotta be on. It gotta have a hip-hop feel to it still.'"
  • Whilst Joseph made the beat, Simmonds wrote and referenced the chorus. The R&B singer-songwriter said he first imagined himself in Jay-Z and West's shoes. "When I recorded it, everybody was like, 'Yo, you sound just like Kanye, you sound just like Jay-Z,'" he remembered. "It's just crazy, because I felt like, at that moment in time, I was them. I got into that mode of: 'What would these guys say? How would they say it?' I think they heard it the first time and loved it."
  • The two emcees spit their rhymes over a dubstep sample of Flux Pavillion's "I Can't Stop." Flux Pavilion, who is known to his mum as Joshua Steele, is an English dubstep producer and DJ and "I Can't Stop" can be found on his 2011 Circus #1 album.
  • Verse Simmonds told The Boombox: "The whole concept [of 'Who Gon Stop Me'] was the space I was in at the time. I was like, 'Who gon' stop me?' Nothing gon' get in front of us and what we're doing. Let's get it!"

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