Montell Jordan revealed that Drake’s “Papi Home” finally helped him recoup his record deal almost three decades on. The R&B legend shared his thoughts about the Certified Lover Boy track that samples his 1995 song “Daddy’s Home” on the We Sound Crazy podcast, calling it a “wild surprise.”
“The content in the song, with the language and stuff like that, is stuff that’s not on brand for me, but it’s on brand for him,” claimed Jordan.
Jordan explained how the sample ended up being a much-needed benefit to his career.
“It advanced the publishing of the original song more which allowed me to recoup faster,” revealed Jordan. “After Certified Lover Boy dropped, my recoupment of my publishing and royalties finally recouped after [29] years.”
That wasn’t the only secret that Jordan revealed during his podcast appearance. He also recounted his introduction to Madonna at the Grammys after he released his debut single, “This Is How We Do It.”
“When I reach out my hand to shake her hand, she looks at me and she goes, ‘Don’t I own you?'” Jordan recalled.
He initially didn’t understand the question, but managed to put the pieces together later.
“When ‘This Is How We Do It’ runs up the charts, before it gets to number one, there’s a song there called ‘Take a Bow’ from Madonna. So ‘This Is How We Do It’ is the song that took Madonna’s record off the charts,” he said. “They tried to do a publishing deal with me for my portion of ‘This Is How We Do It,’ and we wouldn’t do a deal with them. She had a company called Maverick Records.”
Jordan revealed that his co-writer Oji Pierce did sign a deal with Maverick, meaning that “This Is How We Do It” was partly owned by Madonna. “She was still basically saying, ‘Yeah, don’t I own you, because I still have that spot that you had, that number one spot,'” said Jordan.
