Ayra Starr

The vibe of the day was I had lost my voice, I was in the studio and I wasn't sounding as I wanted. My sound engineer

was laughing at me. So I became more cranky, but we made it work. The first version I wasn't feeling, because of my

voice. Then the next day I went to the studio and I did it again. And it came out amazing. Back then, I always used to

make songs about confidence and being that girl. But this was one of those songs that’s about love, being sexy and you

know, a boy. I'm usually not the best at writing love songs. I can write a heartbreak song in my sleep, but you see the

other way around is so hard for me. So when I heard the song, I was like, wait, this is sexy. There was like a whole

intervention for me. My team were very dramatic. They had a call and were like, “Ayra, we need to talk to you. We think

you should release Gimme Dat”. I was like, okay, “why are there 15 people on the phone? It's not that deep”. I went

home, I told my mom and she told me to just pray about it and think about it. I said, okay, I'm ready. Let's take it to

mixing. Let's master it. Let's release it. We had shot the video already literally like four months before. I

co-directed this video but didn’t really like it. So I was like, okay, let's send it to Wizkid. He said, “I love the

song. I'm going to do it, I got you.” Wizkid recorded the song in like three days. Nobody else would have been right on

that song asides from Wizkid. Even just his sonics and the sound, the chorus pattern was definitely very Wizkid. It

feels very like sexy Afrobeats. And everybody knows Wiz is the king of sexy Afrobeats. In the first music video, I had

long hair and that was a whole era for me. Then I was like instead of shooting something entirely new, I can just show

people how like I'm leaving that era behind. So I came out of the car like a phoenix with my new my short hair. We just

combined two stories into one.

I remember my heart was beating so fast before that session. I was like, hey, what if I don't know what to sing? What if

I get there and I don't know what to do? You know, sometimes you get to the studio and nothing is there. It was so quick

because I recorded a song before. He had a whole like song already, he just wanted me to do like a hook. I did the hook

of that one and then I started free-styling. And then he looked at me, he's like, “what's that? Just enter the studio

(and record it) just go”. I was like, are you sure? Because me I’m always overthinking, I'm like, mmm. He was like, just

record it and I did everything in one take.