Songwriter

Kyla

Kyla Reid

London, United Kingdom

Kyla Reid is a London-based UK funky vocalist and songwriter whose 2008 single "Do You Mind" — a Crazy Cousinz production riding a syncopated soca-leaning drum pattern and a bright, plaintive vocal hook — became the sampled and credited core of Drake's "One Dance" (2016). She is credited as a featured artist on "One Dance" because her vocal hook is lifted intact rather than re-sung, with Wizkid's verse and a new dancehall-inflected riddim built underneath. The result became Drake's first solo Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 and the most-streamed song in Spotify history at the time of release. Kyla's UK funky moment in the late 2000s was already historically significant — it bridged grime, soca, and house in London circa 2008-09 — and the Drake credit recontextualized her catalog for a global audience without her having to leave the original recording. Within an encyclopedia of Drake writers she represents a particular kind of credit: the topline whose entire compositional contribution is a hook from an earlier record, licensed and credited rather than re-written, and the credit she earns on the Drake song is not a session credit but the publishing recognition for the lifted hook.