Brandy, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte And Yo-Yo Reunite To Talk “I Wanna Be Down” Remix 20 Years Later

I play the “I Wanna Be Down (Hip-Hop Remix)” like it came out last week, but of course, it came out quite a long time ago, 1995 to be exact, yet it still is a favorite for many almost 20 years later. Brandy spoke to Vibe in the past about how big of a deal it was for her to have the ladies on the remix:

“The hip-hop remix to ‘I Wanna Be Down’…meant the world to me. I’m new…I’m fresh out of the box and these superstars are a part of my first single! They are my mentors and I looked up to them. I was a huge Queen Latifah fan. I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God…I can’t believe this is happening to me.’ I got the chance to vibe with all three of them. They embraced me as a little sister. I was one of the first R&B artists to welcome hip-hop onto an R&B beat. It had never been done before quite like that. Sylvia Rhone came up with that idea, and I just thought it was brilliant. She should get all the praise in the world for that. She wasn’t scared; she just said, ‘This is what we are going to do.’ I knew it was a special record.”

Maybe that’s why Queen Latifah got the gang all back together recently on her show to talk about the creative process behind making the song. That’s right, Brandy, Yo-Yo, MC Lyte and Queen La all sat on the same couch dishing on how the MCs changed verses over and over to compete with each other. Check out what Queen Latifah said:

“I remember going in the studio…Lyte was on that record, and I was like, this is not what–I thought it was a Brandy record, but then I said ‘whoa!’ Lyte made me re-write my part! [laughs] I was like, ‘wait a minute!’ I had some lovey-dovey, emotional cute…I was like ‘oh no no no, I better step my game up or MC Lyte is going to butcher me on the track [laughs]‘”.

But Brandy said she had no idea what they were talking about on the track, but she was just glad they hopped on the track.

“I didn’t know what ya’ll were saying. But I was just so happy that ya’ll were on the song I was like ‘I don’t care, honey! Just do it!’”

Love these ladies! Check out their conversation below (including Yo-Yo’s low-rider reference in the song), as well as the video for the remix further down.