For fans with a solid memory, you may recall catching a Sean Paul cameo in Belly. At the time, the dancehall artist was still a budding upstart compared to the superstar status that would soon follow. As it turns out, the film's star, DMX, had a lot to do with the appearance, and in a recent conversation with HipHopDX, Sean Paul recounted the moments that led up to the opportunity.
He recalled missing out on an event because he was locked in at the studio only find out that DMX ended up attending.
“I went to sleep upset,” he told the outlet. “The next morning, I woke up with a phone call from Tony Kelly. My phone was ringing, you know, one of those early cell phones, and he’s like, ‘Yo, come to my studio now to do a song with DMX and Mr. Vegas.’ I was like, ‘Yes sir!’ I immediately just ran and left my house. Reached over there, X wasn’t there. It was me, Vegas and the riddim basically. Tony left us in the room and said, ‘You just build something for it.’ He said, ‘Hype Williams is shooting a movie and wants a song to put in the movie, so let’s do this.’ I was like, ‘Alright, wicked.’
He goes on to explain that he and Vegas continued to work on the track until 4 in the afternoon until X rolled in around 5.
"They played the track and he was like, ‘Hmm, alright, okay. Well, this is what I got.’ And he starts [rapping], ‘Here comes the boom, here comes the boom'."
The track's original version was geared toward female listeners, but Sean admit that he and Mr. Vegas switched it up to match the energy that DMX brought to the cut.
"I was getting more calls like, ‘Yo, they’re gonna shoot a video and they might put you in the movie, just come along,'” Sean Paul said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ We actually did reach to the stage part of Belly and they were like, ‘Just go up there and sing the song a couple times.’ I was kinda like, so where’s DMX now?’ And he wasn’t there, but they were like, ‘This is just a scene where they’re gonna show a dance-off but we’re putting this song in the movie [...] It was good days and just exciting for me as a young artist to be put on such a platform. That was one of the biggest things to happen to me back in the day there. So big up Hype Williams, big up Tony Kelly, big up Vegas and big up the dog. R.I.P. DMX.”
