Universal and SRC put out Melanie Fiona’s The Bridge in 2009, and the copyright line on this new single names the same two labels seventeen years later. Nice bit of paperwork. It is also the setup for Paul Damixie rebuilding “Give It To Me Right” into a floor record, with Fiona billed next to him, not buried in a sample credit.
It runs at a flat 120 with the kick on every beat and nothing clever in between. No shuffle, no offbeat trick. Just the straight pulse under a topline that was never written for one. The low end carries it, the mids stay out of the way, and Fiona comes through clean on top.
I braced for the lazy version, where a producer takes a song people love and sands it flat. This is not that. The hook keeps the swagger it had on an R&B record, and hearing it land over a straight four is better than it has any business being.
Damixie has been making dance records since a 2009 EP called Cape Town, so he and this song have run the same years in different rooms. Their shared corner here begins with this, since this is the first time the two names have landed together. It plays at main stage volume to a field that already knows half the words.
The best decision on the record is one Damixie did not make. He never tries to out-write her.
Listen on: Apple Music · Pandora
