Chaka Demus and Pliers win ASCAP Latin award through Bad Bunny interpolation

A Jamaican dancehall standard from 1992 just surfaced again in a Latin awards room, with Chaka Demus, Pliers and the late Lloyd “Gitsy” Willis landing among the 2026 ASCAP Latin Music Award winners through Bad Bunny’s “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR.”

ASCAP’s Latin Music Awards were held in Miami on May 5, 2026, and the organization said the ceremony honors the songwriters and publishers behind the most-performed Spanish-language songs of the past year. The room brought together writers and industry figures from Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and across the United States, while ASCAP also marked Daddy Yankee as the most ASCAP award-winning Latin songwriter of all time and named Keityn ASCAP Latin Songwriter of the Year.

The path to the award runs through a chain of interpolation that says a lot about how Jamaican dancehall travels. Bad Bunny’s “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR,” which appears on his 2025 album Debí Tirar Más Fotos and runs 2:36 on Apple Music, draws from Wisin & Yandel’s “La Barría.” That song, in turn, interpolated elements of “Murder She Wrote,” the 1992 Chaka Demus & Pliers classic that still carries the fingerprints of the wider Jamaican production machine behind it.

That original cut was produced by Sly & Robbie and Willis, a detail that matters here because it puts the late guitarist-producer directly inside one of the most durable dancehall records of the era. Discogs credits “Murder She Wrote” to J. Taylor, L. Willis and S. Dunbar, with Sly & Robbie listed as producer. In other words, this is not just a Bad Bunny story or a Latin-pop crossover story. It is a songwriting credit surviving long enough to re-enter a new awards system decades later.

“Murder She Wrote” first came out as a single in 1992 and was reissued in late 1993. By early 1994 it had reached No. 27 on the UK Singles Chart, and in the United States it peaked at No. 57 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending 17 weeks on that chart. That kind of run explains why the tune keeps resurfacing: it left the reggae and dancehall lane early, then kept rolling through later hits until it became part of the DNA of contemporary Latin pop.

For reggae fans, the message is bigger than one trophy line. Chaka Demus, Pliers and Willis are being recognized in a Latin awards setting because a Jamaican anthem from the early 1990s still has enough pull to generate new value in 2026. “Murder She Wrote” is not only remembered, it is still paying.