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’
Sister Nancy performs on Day 2 of Mill Valley Music Festival at Friends Field on May 11, 2025 in Mill Valley, California. Steve Jennings/Getty Images.
By Kyle Denis | Friday, 3 October 2025
The dancehall pioneer speaks with Billboard about her new doc, upcoming Brooklyn performance and fighting for what's hers. Read the full interview.
A little over 40 years ago, Sister Nancy — widely considered the first female dancehall DJ — released a song that would transcend genre, her home country of Jamaica and time itself: “Bam Bam.”
Built around a sample of Ansell Collins’ “Stalag 17” riddim, “Bam Bam” is arguably the most sampled and recognizable dancehall song in 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 — as well as the song’s infectious melody and alluring brass — has proven irresistible to generations of musicians across genres and regions. In 2024, Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure, on which Sister Nancy is both featured (“The French 75”) and sampled (“Water Slide”), earned a Grammy nomination for album of the year.
Sister Nancy’s breakthrough hit initially appeared on her 1982 debut album, One, Two, garnering far more notoriety internationally than in Jamaica. Though not a chart hit upon its release, the song has grown into an indisputable classic around the world, a perennial musical announcement of summer’s arrival. Since 1991, when Luminate began electronically tracking music sales, “Bam Bam” has garnered over 185.4 million official on-demand U.S. streams and 329,000 digital downloads. Sister Nancy relocated to New Jersey in 1996 — and didn’t put out another album until 2007’s Sister Nancy Meets Fireproof — but the undying legacy of “Bam Bam” helped influence several new generations of female dancehall DJs, including icons like Lady Saw (now Minister Marion Hall), Macka Diamond, Spice and Shenseea. By 2016, she retired from her accounting job to return to the stage and her pursuit of music.
A few decades removed from the release of “Bam Bam,” Sister Nancy, 63, finally seized the opportunity to tell her remarkable story on her own terms, resulting in a new documentary titled Bam Bam: The Story of Sister Nancy. Written and directed by Oya Media Group founder Alison Duke, the documentary follows the arc of Sister Nancy’s life and career, culminating in her victorious battle to win back years of unpaid royalties due to unauthorized samples, through tour performances, interviews, reenactments and archival footage. The film, an official selection at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, is yet another innovative step forward by Sister Nancy on behalf of all women in dancehall, a physical space and musical genre that can be flagrantly misogynistic.
“If it’s mine, I am going to fight for it,” she stresses to Billboard. “It’s either I win or lose, but I have to try. And I implore all women to do the same thing. If it’s just sitting there and you haven’t claimed it, you’re going to lose it. And I’m not going to lose.”
