By Yasmine Peru – STAR Writer—

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Cutty Ranks—

These days, veteran dancehall artiste Phillip Thomas, more popularly known as Cutty Ranks, is living his best life.

The artiste, who rose to fame in the late ‘80s, says his career is far from over, and he has the numbers to prove it.

Cutty could easily get tired just keeping track of the sales of his collaborative single and counting of the number of views that the video is racking up on YouTube. At last count, the video for the song called Dame Tu Cosita had surpassed one billion views on YouTube – 1,222,298,947 to be exact.

“This makes me the Jamaican artiste with the most views on YouTube,” Cutty Ranks said.

The song by Panamanian DJ and producer El Chombo lists Cutty Ranks as a ‘featured’ artiste, but the entertainer says that he is much more than that.

“I met Rodney Clarke, who goes by the name El Chombo, in the ‘90s in Panama, and I wrote a song originally called El Cosita in English and then he translated it into Spanish. It was my first Spanish song,” he said.

CONTACT LOST

According to Cutty Ranks, he lost contact with Clarke, but a song called Cosita Mix was included in the 1998 album Cuentos de la Cripta Vol. 2 ( Tales from the Crypt Vol. 2).

Cutty Ranks, however, went on to do other Spanish songs over the years and carved out a little space for himself in the then emerging reggaeton genre.

Fast forward 20 years, and, with the help of a green, gecko-looking alien, Dame Tu Cosita was given a new lease on life via a video and a subsequent dance challenge which sent it into the stratosphere. All this was courtesy of French video game animator ArtNoux, which took the song and used it as the soundtrack for his animated alien. He posted it on Dailymotion, labelling it “Alien Popoy possessed by reggaeton vibration!” Crediting El Chombo for the music.

In a May 2018 interview with Billboard, just after the song entered the Hot 100 chart at No. 81 with 10.4 million US streams, El Chombo made no mention of Cutty Ranks’ contribution to the song.

Well, Cutty Ranks got a lawyer and they struck a partial deal, which allowed the song to stay on the video sharing platform.

When asked if he was now receiving royalty for Dame Tu Cosita, which has gone platinum seven times over, Cutty Ranks said that other persons had tried to claim it “but my lawyers are still dealing with the case.”

Cutty Ranks, who is still touring, has shows lined up for Trinidad and Costa Rica in June and July. He also plans to release two new songs, Mi Amor and Natural Beauty, in the near future.