"Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica)" is a song written and produced by American singer Mariah Carey, DJ Clue, Duro, and Mystikal, and recorded for Carey's tenth album Glitter (2001). It is built around a sample of the 1980s song "Funkin' for Jamaica (N.Y.)" produced by Tom Browne and Toni Smith, and it features rapped parts by Mystikal. Mystikal raps—in a voice evocative of "The Godfather of Soul," James Brown -- about wild times during the song's verses, while Carey repeatedly tells him "don't stop" in the chorus. It was released as the album's third single in 2001.
Like the preceding singles from the album (with the exception of "Loverboy"), "Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica)" was a commercial disappointment. It did not chart on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, but it appeared at number 23 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart, which represents the twenty-five singles below the Hot 100's number 100 position which have not yet appeared on the Hot 100. Whereas "Never Too Far" (the album's second single) was solicited primarily to the pop and adult contemporary market, "Don't Stop" was pushed more toward the R&B and rhythmic market. It reached the top forty in the UK and Australia, as part of a double A-side with "Never Too Far."
The single's music video fared much better than the song, receiving heavy airplay on MTV. Directed by Sanaa Hamri, it has the theme of southern bayous and lifestyles and presents Carey and Mystikal in "southern style" clothes and hairstyles. Some shots feature three versions of Carey singing into one microphone on the screen at one time. "Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica)" appears in a scene of the film Glitter, when producer Julian "Dice" Black has met Billie Frank (played by Carey) and invites her to an impromptu freestyle jam session in his club.
Read more about Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica): Formats and Track Listings, Charts
Famous quotes containing the word stop:
“The mastery of ones phonemes may be compared to the violinists mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbors renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.”
—W.V. Quine (b. 1908)