Unless you’ve been wearing earplugs since late January, you’ve definitely heard Rihanna’s immediate dance/wiggle-inducing and undeniably infectious single “Work” from her LP Anti. Maybe you’re even guilty of requesting it at the club…

Regardless, what is most striking about the song, and what bewitched fans the world over, was the beat. There seemed to be some confusion as to its origins – Rolling Stone was quoted describing it as “tropical house-flavored” in a tweet. Tropical house is a term applied to many recent pop/EDM sensations including Kygo and Justin Bieber’s Purpose and refers to the poppy, summery, easy listening branch of EDM that has been trending lately. More specifically, tropical house is characterized by relaxed Caribbean vibes, steel drums, pan flutes and dancehall-inspired instrumentation.

If one isn’t familiar with it already, upon further inspection, the beat driving “Work” is not a new shift in pop music; it is in fact an ode to an existing genre. The Barbadian’s latest top track was produced by Kingston native and Drake collaborator Boi-1da and bears striking resemblance to a dancehall riddim from 1998. “Sail Away” by Richie Stephens has been used in Beenie Man’s “Badman Nuh Flee” and Sean Paul’s “Fit and Legit”. In any case, whether or not “Work” was directly influenced by this riddim, Rih-Rih is going back to the 2005 “Pon de Replay”-era vibes and paying tribute to dancehall culture.

In fact, there is a whole assemblage of artists trying to ride this Jamaican beat wave, closely imitating the sound of popular Jamaican dance music. Unfortunately, they often fail to properly credit the source of their inspiration. Drake is an obvious example with “One Dance” and “Controlla” (why aren’t more people questioning his recent acquisition of Patois?). Bieber’s “Sorry” is not only heavily influenced by the island sound, but also boasts an outrageously popular music video, reaping over 1 billion views on YouTube, that is blatantly featuring classic Jamaican moves such as “Gully Creepa” and calling them “Crawling Booty Pop” instead.

Dancehall had its beginnings as a music genre in the late 1970s. The name itself comes from the dance halls of 1940s and 50s Kingston, where people would gather in the slums to dance to tunes played on sound systems, or turn tables and speakers loaded onto a truck and brought to street parties with local MCs and deejays singing or toasting (rapping) over the tracks. The idea of combining deejaying with singing, or singjaying, arose from reggae music and became an important step in the development of dancehall. These parties often competed for clientele, which resulted in outbreaks of violence and power struggles and eventually led to the rise of skanking (associated with ska music), the dance forefather of moshing later adopted by British skinheads. Music played in Kingston progressed from jazz to rhythm and blues to roots reggae, and finally to a modified version of reggae – the original dancehall – which then became digitalized as a result of the rising prominence of electronic instrumentation in the 1980s. The leading producers responsible for many of the first dancehall riddims were a duo called Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson and Cleveland “Clevie” Brown, or Steely and Clevie.

The earliest dancehall artists include Yellowman and Eek-a-Mouse, both of whom went on to gain international acclaim in the 80s. Female deejays such as Lady Saw, Sister Nancy, and Lady G also gained prominence during this time. Notably, Yellowman galvanized Jamaica’s influence on American hip-hop music with his smash hit “Zungguzungguguzungguzeng” which was later used by legends such as Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, and Mos Def.

Reusing beats is common practice in Jamaican popular music. The term “riddim” is the Jamaican Patois pronunciation of “rhythm” and refers to the instrumental background of a song. Producers compose riddims, each with its own name, which are later recorded over by other artists and turned into proper songs. For example, Sean Paul’s infamous “Get Busy” is over the “Diwali” riddim written by Steven “Lenky” Marsden. In a recent interview with The Fader, Sean Paul reflects, “Riddims were an economic thing, as opposed to paying for a band: the tape could hold a certain amounts of tracks, so there’s one producer and he has many artists on. That struck such a vibe in Jamaica, because it was cool to hear that many people with different perspectives. You could have one guy singing about a girl with a fat ass, and another person singing something more conscious — and it’s on the same riddim.”

In the 90s, dancehall began sounding more like how we know it today. New producers and deejays – such as Buju Banton – who sang violent and sexually explicit lyrics as opposed to the peaceful messages of Rastafarian culture, marked the change in style. As a result, artists began gaining international attention, especially in the United States. Early crossover chart-toppers include “Murder She Wrote” by Chaka Demus & Pliers, Dawn Penn’s “You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)” and Shabba Ranks’ classic “Mr. Loverman”. As the style evolved, dancehall entered the world mainstream with familiar superstars such as Vybz Cartel, Sean Paul, Mavado, Konshens, and Popcaan.

Although outside recognition was a positive development for the genre, crossover songs were often tweaked for the Western audience. “I remember years when “Get Busy” was a big song for me, and “Temperature,” and “Gimme The Light.” Those three songs had to be remixed by foreign mixers from America, so that it could sound as big as whatever Justin Timberlake song was playing on the radio in the States. Technology reached us slow, and we kind of suffered,” Sean Paul told The Fader.

This is where the lines between expanding the audience for Jamaican music and exploiting a culture get blurry – should Western pop stars be drawing so much from little-known artists who can’t even get a visa to the US? Long-time voice of the oppressed and queen of culturally diverse pop, M.I.A., seems to have the most straightforward answer to this question in response to Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” video, “When I go to the Caribbean everyone hates it, because they’re like, ‘Oh, fuck, look at all these girls dancing like black girls, but there’s no black girls in the video.’ And I’m not happy with that either. I look at it and go, Yo, that’s fucked up.”