Trinidadian Soca Icon Denise Belfon Reveals How Drake Helped Her Receive Royalties From ‘Work’ for the First Time in 30 Years
Trinidadian soca star Denise Belfon has revealed that Drake's involvement helped her finally secure royalties for songs sampling "Work," her 1998 hit, after 28 years of being denied payment. Speaking to Billboard, Belfon said the producer of "Work," Pupa Nas-T, had long refused to authorise her royalties, but was compelled to agree once Drake's team sampled her vocals on "BBW," a track from his May 2026 triple-album release Iceman–Habibti–Maid of Honour. The breakthrough marks a significant, if overdue, moment of recognition for a song that has shaped soca, house and EDM music for nearly three decades.
"Work," recorded in one take in 1998, became a genre-crossing phenomenon via a 2000 Masters at Work remix and subsequent reworks by David Guetta, RL Grime, DJ Flex and Equiknoxx, among others, with the latter's version sparking a viral TikTok dance challenge in 2020. Numerous artists have sampled the track in recent years, including Shenseea and Megan Thee Stallion's "Lick" (nearly 31 million US streams), Leigh-Anne's "Been A Minute," and recent releases by MOLIY and Major Lazer. Belfon, 57, said Drake's legal team's negotiating tactics proved the decisive factor in resolving the long-standing royalties dispute, and that she has embraced "BBW" as a personal anthem.
- Drake's "BBW" forced Belfon's original producer to grant her royalties
- Belfon had been denied payment for "Work" sampling for 28 years
- "Work" has fuelled countless remixes and samples since 1998
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Denise Belfon is a soca artist from Trinidad and Tobago who recorded the song "Work" in 1998. Over the following decades, the track was reworked by various producers and DJs, spreading far beyond soca into house and dance music, and more recently it has been sampled by a string of other artists in new hits. Despite the song's wide reach, Belfon says she went without royalty payments for it for nearly three decades.
At the centre of the dispute is Pupa Nas-T, the producer of "Work," who Belfon says withheld the authorisation needed for her to be paid when others sampled the track. This changed after the Canadian rapper Drake used her vocals from "Work" on a track from one of his own recent album releases, bringing fresh attention and legal weight to the situation.
The story matters because it touches on a common issue in the music industry: performers, especially those from smaller or regional genres, not being fairly compensated when their work is reused or sampled by bigger, more commercially dominant artists. Belfon's case highlights how the involvement of a major star can shift long-standing power imbalances in royalty disputes.