rap

772. ‘Men in Black’, by Will Smith

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

The first half of 1997 was an interesting musical smorgasbord, with a quick turnover of number ones meaning we flitted gayly from genre to genre. During the second half of the year things will get slightly more predictable at the top of the charts, and records will start staying at #1 for slightly longer…

Men in Black, by Will Smith (his 1st and only solo #1)

4 weeks, from 10th August – 7th September 1997

Beginning with the year’s second big soundtrack hit. ‘Men in Black’ was the summer’s big popcorn movie, featuring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and some aliens, which I thought I remembered fondly until I realised I was thinking of ‘Independence Day’, from the year before. I probably did see ‘Men in Black’ at the time, but it hasn’t remained with me.

The lyrics are geared towards the movie plot, which means unique lines like: Walk in shadow, Move in silence, Guard against extra-terrestrial violence… It reminds me of Partners in Kryme – one of the first hip-hop chart toppers – and their rhymes about which Teenage Ninja Turtle liked pizza (Michelangelo, of course). You could class this, and Puff Daddy’s ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ as a step back for hip-hop, after more innovative and respectable #1s by the Fugees and Coolio. But at the same time, this was a huge-selling, month-long number one, and another sign that rap had gone mainstream. (It was also, I believe, the first time that one hip-hop track had knocked another off top spot).

It’s based around ‘Forget Me Nots’, a minor hit in 1982 for Patrice Rushen. If it sounds familiar, then that’s because George Michael had sampled it a year earlier on ‘Fastlove’. The chorus was edited and sung by Coko, of the R&B group SWV, who really should have gotten a co-credit, so much does she bring to the show.

“Will Smith don’t have to cuss to sell records, but I do”, Eminem would famously rap a few years after this. It’s easy to be snobbish about Smith’s family-friendly approach to hip-hop (an NME review at the time labelled him the ‘Cliff Richard of rap’) but really, this is well-made, catchy pop. I don’t love it now, twenty-seven years on, but it was everywhere that summer, and was the #1 when I started high school. Plus the Bouncin’ with me, Slide with me… break is still great fun. File it under ‘fondly remembered’.

‘Men in Black’ was Will Smith’s debut solo single, featuring on his first solo album ‘Big Willie Style’ (tee-hee) and marked a return to music after he’d begun focusing on acting in the early-nineties. He has of course already featured at number one, as the Fresh Prince with Jazzy Jeff in 1993; while this song set him up for a good few years of chart success. He would have eight further Top 5 hits between now and 2005, including three #2s. Respect from the hip-hop community never quite arrived, but he had a great ear for a sample, and made some of the records that define the late-nineties for many people of my generation. He hasn’t released much new music since the mid-2000s, but remains one of Hollywood’s big hitters…

729. ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’, by Coolio ft. LV

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Although 1995 is turning out to be a fairly – let’s be blunt – crap year for number one singles, it’s also turning out to be a year of firsts at the top of the charts.

Gangsta’s Paradise, by Coolio ft. LV (their 1st and only #1s)

2 weeks, from 22nd October – 5th November 1995

We’ve had our first Britpop #1s, as well as our first ‘Explicit Warning’ chart-toppers. You could also argue that Robson & Jerome, with Simon Cowell as mastermind, heralded the start of the ‘TV personality as pop star’ age, which will dominate the next twenty years of British pop music. And as we draw towards the year’s end, here comes our first proper rap #1.

We’ve had plenty of hip-hop at #1 before this: Vanilla Ice, Partners in Kryme, Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince… Throw in the Simpsons, and John Barnes, and it’s clear that rap has struggled to be seen as much more than a novelty. Until now, for this is uncompromising hip-hop: undiluted, comfortable in its own skin, not softening its edges in looking for widespread appeal.

Coolio weaves a tale of life on the streets, a life of drugs and violence that often leads to death: You better watch how you talkin’, And where you walkin’, Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk… In it, the singer both recognises his situation: Why are we, So blind to see, That the ones we hurt, Are you and me…? and sees no way out: They say I gotta learn, But nobody’s here to teach me, If they can’t understand it, How can they reach me?

Heavy stuff, but it’s lifted to classic status by one of the all-time great samples. Stevie Wonder’s ‘Pastime Paradise’ provides a compelling, propulsive melody around which Coolio tells the story. LV, who sings the chorus, changes ‘Pastime’ to ‘Gangsta’, while a gospel choir provides the finishing touch.

The record’s authenticity must have struck a chord, as it became the UK’s highest-selling hip-hop record in fairly short order (today it sits well inside the Top 50 highest-selling singles in British chart history). It featured on the soundtrack to the Michelle Pfeiffer film ‘Dangerous Minds’ – Pfeiffer also appears in the video – which may have helped in its success. But probably not to the extent that the song wouldn’t have been a hit without it.

I’ve called this the first ‘proper’, ‘modern’ rap #1, but I’ve been reluctant to call it the first ‘gangsta’ rap number one. Mainly because the word is literally there, in the song’s title, and it feels slightly lazy. Plus, while the song’s themes may be pretty gangsta, the lyrics are all quite PG. They weren’t originally, however – Coolio had written a much more explicit version, but Stevie Wonder refused to sanction the sample until he cleaned it up.

Swears or no swears, this is a brilliant song, one of the best that 1995, if not the entire decade, has to offer. I also realised, while writing this post, how many of the lyrics I could remember. I certainly wasn’t rapping along at the time, so they must have entered my brain through cultural osmosis over the years – always a sign of a song’s classic status. Coolio went on to have three more Top 10 hits, including ‘C U When U Get There’, which has an equally famous ‘sample’. And of course, just as importantly for people of my vintage, he recorded the ‘Keenan & Kel’ theme song. He died following an overdose two years ago, aged just fifty-nine.

718. ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’, by The Outhere Brothers

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

Is 1995 the year with the biggest disparity between what it is remembered for, and what actually made #1? 1977 might have a case, the year punk exploded yet in which David Soul was the breakthrough star. 1995, though…?

Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle), by The Outhere Brothers (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 26th March – 2nd April 1995

I mention this because this next number one has left me in a state of shock. Shock at how I don’t really remember it. Shock at some of the lyrics. And shock at just how bloody awful it is… Biiiyyaaatch!

I thought that Rednex had my upcoming ‘Worst #1 Award’ in the bag. But as horrible as ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ is, at least it is identifiable as a ‘song’. This is an absolute racket. The pitch of the singer’s voice as he repeats the title line: Don’t stop movin’ baby oh that booty drive me crazy…, the one-note beat and the bubble-popping sound effect, the way that that one line is chopped up over and over again, ad nauseum… Some mixes are better than others – and the video attached at the foot of this post is the most palatable version, with a Hi-NRG beat – but most are dire.

I’m torn between wrapping this post up as soon as possible, trying to forget that this record ever existed, and delving a bit deeper. The radio edit of ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’ is repetitively, mind-numbingly, boring. But that wasn’t the reason this made number one. For the other, non-edited mixes reveal this to be the filthiest number one single we’ve heard so far on this countdown.

No, make that one of the filthiest number ones, ever. Period. Even in this post-‘WAP’ world, the lyrics here still raise an eyebrow. There’s that opening Biiiyyaaatch! for a start. Then there’s: Put your ass on my face… I love the way your… No I can’t type the rest. Girl you’ve got to suck my… Nope, still can’t. I’m not a prude, but this isn’t something I’ve never had to consider in my seven hundred and seventeen previous posts. The worst word we’ve encountered so far has been, I think, ‘bullshit’. And that’s a word I heard on Radio 4 the other day… I knew the 1990s would see morals and standards loosen (God, I sound like Mary Whitehouse), but I though it would be gradual. A ‘bitch’ here and a ‘fuck’ there. But no, it all arrived at once, right here: a smorgasbord of vulgarity. Which means that ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’ is actually a hugely important chart-topper…

But nah, I don’t want to give it that sort of weight. It happened. Swearing in #1 singles is fine now. Let’s move on. (And anyway, luckily for all of us, The Outhere Brothers have an even bigger hit coming up very soon…) They were a duo from Chicago – yet another pair of fake chart-topping siblings – and this was their breakthrough hit, after previous releases such as ‘Pass the Toilet Paper’ had failed to chart. Thirteen-year-old boys around the world then kept the pair in hits for the next couple of years, though their subsequent album ‘1 Polish, 2 Biscuits and a Fish Sandwich’ wasn’t as successful (and you can look up the meaning of that title, if you dare…)

Back to what I mentioned in the intro, about 1995 being a strange year, in which most of the acts and songs we remember the year for didn’t make the top of the charts. It’s a theme I’ll return to, especially when a different gruesome twosome dominate later in the year. Up next, though, I’m sort of instantly proven wrong, for it’s the decade’s biggest boyband, with one of the nation’s best-loved songs…

(The ‘best’ version of the song…)

(The explicit version, if you must…)

695. ‘Boom! Shake the Room’, by Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

Yo back up now and give a brother room, The fuse is lit and I’m about to go boom…! The first thing that becomes immediately apparent when I press play on our next number one is that I know almost all the words. When and how this happened I don’t know, but here we are…

Boom! Shake the Room, by Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 19th September – 3rd October 1993

It’s the most rap-heavy #1 so far. No sung chorus, a bit of chanting, just Big Will spitting rhymes. Or should that be ‘The Fresh Prince’. It’s easy to assume that this was a tie-in with his role in the hit sitcom, but in reality the sitcom was a tie-in for a rap career which had been going since the mid-eighties.

And while it may be the purest hip-hop chart topper thus far, I’ll make the same comment that I’ve made about almost all rap songs we’ve featured: it’s hard now not to see this as a novelty. The call and response, the lines about ‘scoring like Jordan’, the stuttering verse… All very cute, all very tame. A kids party DJ could throw this on and fear no repercussions. The closest we get to something gangsta is when Will promises to find a girl, flip her around and then work that booty…

But, it’s a lot of fun. Like I said, I know nearly all the words. I grew up with rap a lot more explicit than this (with lots of words that a person of my complexion can’t go around saying…) I’m reminded of the classic Eminem line: Will Smith doesn’t have to cuss to sell records, Well I do, So fuck him, And fuck you too… That’s funny, but it also shows where Will Smith stood in the early 2000s: commercially very successful, but an outlier in the eyes of other rappers. Back in 1993, we’re on the verge of rap becoming a dominant sound in the charts, and I really don’t know if ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ was seen as cool, or already a relic of an earlier time.

Speaking of Eminem, we’re only seven years away from him scoring a huge #1 single about having his girlfriend gagged and bound in the boot of his car. That’s a huge shift, considering that the rap songs to have made #1 have been this, one about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Vanilla Ice. While the worst swearword that’s been uttered in a number one single has been, I think, ‘bullshit’. It’ll be interesting to watch how quickly tastes and standards change in the remaining years of the 1990s.

And while you could say that Will Smith became a figure of fun, spare a thought for the guy behind the decks on this record. Initially, Jazzy Jeff was the star of the duo, with first billing here and on their early hits, with wonderful titles like ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand’ and the ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ sampling ‘Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble’. At the very start of their relationship, Smith was Jazzy Jeff’s stand-in hype-man. Come the TV series, though, Jeff had become a punchline, spending most of his time getting launched out the door by Uncle Phil. ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ was the duo’s biggest hit, in the UK at least, but it was one of their last. Will Smith went solo in 1997 (more on that soon) with Jeff producing some his songs. He’s remained very active though, performing with Smith from time to time, while one of his biggest legacies is popularising the ‘transformer scratch’, a version of which opens this record.

654. ‘Ice Ice Baby’, by Vanilla Ice

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

Alright stop. Collaborate and listen… It’s time for one of the most maligned number one singles of all time.

Ice Ice Baby, by Vanilla Ice (his 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 25th November – 23rd December 1990

And I get the hate. Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, it sounds very dated. Yes, Vanilla Ice comes across as a weapons-grade moron. But, let me play devil’s advocate. A) Being ridiculous isn’t necessarily a disadvantage for a record that wants to be a hit. This is far from the first ridiculous chart-topper. B) Early hip hop records do sound dated, very focused on rhyme and meter. And C) As for Vanilla Ice looking like a moron… Well, show me any rapper that you wouldn’t look at in the street and think seemed a bit eccentric.

Yet at the same time, Vanilla Ice is the worst thing about this record. Away from his look at me lyrics (If my rhyme was a drug, I’d sell it by the gram…) I’d say the moody synths and the riff that sounds suspiciously like a #1 from ten years earlier could easily form the basis of a hit single in 2023. And I say that it sounds ‘like’ ‘Under Pressure’, because Vanilla Ice claimed that it wasn’t a sample, and that he’d added an extra note. Queen and David Bowie weren’t terribly convinced – they settled out of court and were given co-writing credits.

Nowadays, for sure, ‘Ice Ice Baby’ is a punchline, bound to feature on a ‘Worst Moments of the ‘90s’ clipshow on Channel 5. But, at the time, was it taken seriously? It seems that it was, getting good reviews in Billboard, the NME, and Entertainment Weekly. When exactly the tide turned, I’m not sure. Perhaps it was a victim of its own success, or perhaps the controversy over the ‘sample’ took the gloss off it? Vanilla Ice – whose real name is the gloriously un-gangsta Robert Van Winkle – seems simultaneously annoyed by this albatross around his neck, and unwilling to let it die. He’s released live versions and anniversary remixes, as well as a nu-metal version (which is better than it has any right to be…)

Van Winkle never matched the heights of his debut single. The follow-up, a cover of ‘Play That Funky Music’, made #10 and since then he’s never bothered the Top 20. He’s had a troubled time of it, with firearms charges, burglary, domestic abuse and illegal drag-racing on his rap sheet. And yet, here he stands, with only the 2nd hip-hop #1 in British chart history (and certainly the most credible of the two so far, after ‘Turtle Power’.)

I’m still not sure how to finish and move on from ‘Ice Ice Baby’. On the one hand, it seems to have set hip-hop back by a good few years. At the same time, it’s a very modern rap track: the lyrics are all about how bad-ass, how dangerous, and how popular with the ladies Ice is. And there isn’t a rapper around who hasn’t recorded at least one self-aggrandising track. But I’m not sure it’s very good. It might even be terrible. Let’s leave the final word to Mr Van Winkle: Let’s get out of here, Word to yo’ mother… And speaking of bad-ass mofos; Cliff Richard’s up next!

648. ‘Turtle Power’, by Partners in Kryme

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Cowabunga! God, I used to love the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. (Not, note, the Ninja Turtles, as the word ‘ninja’ apparently had too many violent connotations for UK audiences). Strangely, though, I was completely unaware of this song. Maybe because it was from the soundtrack to the Turtle’s first live-action movie, which I’ve never seen, rather than the far superior animated TV series.

Turtle Power, by Partners in Kryme (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 22nd July – 19th August 1990

Still, I was expecting this to be a remake of the classic theme tune (Heroes in a half-shell, Turtle Power!) I was also fully expecting it to be terrible. But… It’s neither of those things. It’s an actually quite funky rap track, with a new jack swing beat and creepy organs. It sounds a little, bear with me, like Dr Dre covering ‘The Monster Mash’.

The verses tell the story of the Turtles, and how they came to be. Splinter’s the teacher, Shredder the bad guy, while April O’Neil’s the reporter. (Partners in Kryme were clearly given a remit to mention every character at least once.) It also has to set up the movie: The crime wave is high with mugging mysterious, All police and detectives are furious, ‘Cause they can’t find the source, Of this lethally evil force… Plus one stanza is given over to ‘believe in yourself kids’ motivation: So when you’re in trouble don’t give in and turn sour, Try to rely on your, Turtle Power…

According to some sources, this is the very first hip-hop track to make #1 in the UK. I’m not sure that New Edition would agree with that, or Snap!, or Soul II Soul, or John Barnes. But I get the point: those acts had elements of it in their hit singles; this is pure hip-hop. Which means that when rap properly debuts atop the British charts, it arrives spitting rhymes like: Pizza’s the food that’s sure to please, These ninjas are into pepperoni and cheese…

I genuinely expected to hate this. But I don’t. The kid in me enjoys the heavily vocodered chorus: T-U-R-T-L-E power…, and then there’s also the nostalgia factor of it being from one of my favourite childhood cartoons. Lyrics aside, I think this might genuinely hold up, in a way that not all early rap does. Partners in Kryme were a duo from New York, made up of DJ Keymaster Snow and MC Golden Voice. I’m not sure if they were formed for this record; but they had no other hits, before or after, making them a classic one-hit wonder. (The ‘Kryme’ in their name stands for Keep Rhythm Your Motivating Element. Which is catchy.)

Whether or not this really was the first hip-hop chart-topper, 1990 was certainly the year it went mainstream. Snap!, John Barnes’ rap, as already mentioned, plus this, and a skinny, Queen-sampling white guy coming up very soon. It’s certainly going mainstream, but it’s still largely seen as a novelty. We’ll have to wait a while for a ‘serious’ rap #1, but when the time does come there’ll be no looking back for hip-hop as chart-topping force.

521. ‘Candy Girl’, by New Edition

/ UK #1s blog / 19 Comments

Hmm… On the one hand, you could argue that this next #1 emphatically breaks the run of eighties classics that we’ve been enjoying. On the other, you could argue that this record is as much an eighties classic as ‘Billie Jean’ or ‘Let’s Dance’…

Candy Girl, by New Edition (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, 22nd – 29th May 1983

I mean ‘classic’ not so much in the sense that this song is any good; but that it is jam-packed with eighties flourishes. There is no mistaking when this record was released. And this is American eighties. We’ve had lots of ‘British’ eighties over the past three years, in the new-wave, post punk, New Romantic acts that have topped the charts. The 2nd British invasion is well underway but, as the decade wears on things will get a lot more US-led. Starting here…

Candy girl, You are my world… First things first, this is a pretty blatant rip-off of The Jackson 5’s ‘ABC’. And not just in terms of the melody: we’ve got five young, black Americans bringing a bright and peppy pop tune to the top of the charts. (They weren’t shy about the comparison either: the group’s name refers to them being a ‘new edition’ of the Jacksons.) Second things second: we’ve got rapping!

We’ve had bands toy with rap – mainly reggae acts like Dave & Ansil Collins and Musical Youth (who are another point of comparison with New Edition) – but this is the first genuine hip-hop number one. No other genre will dominate the next forty years of the charts as much as rap, so this is a bit of a moment. My girl’s like candy, A candy treat, She knocks me right off my feet… People complain about modern hip-hop lyrics, but… My girl’s the best and that’s no lie, She tells me I’m her only guy… Give me ‘WAP’ any day of the week.

It’s not just the rapping that makes this sound so modern though. The beat is clear and heavy – a glimpse ahead to new jack swing later in the decade – and the squelchy, farty synths are almost a voice in their own right. Which isn’t a good thing… Someone was let loose on the decks, and needed to be reined in. By the end they’re mimicking ‘ring a ring a roses’ like a demented playground chant…

In a classic boy-band debut single move, there’s a break to allow an introduction to the members who will soon be adorning bedroom walls the world over. Check out Mike and Bobby’s ladies… Ooh-wee… What about Ronnie’s? She’s bad… It’s incredibly cringey, but these moments always are. I’m forty years too late, and thirty years too old, to appreciate it.

If that write up sounded harsh then I didn’t really mean it to. I have to admit I’m enjoying this… Sort of. If you’re going to build a song so obviously around ‘ABC’ then you’re giving yourself a solid foundation. There’s an endearing energy to it, the boys were all just fourteen or fifteen when this was released, even if the farty synths and the high-pitched voices are a bit too much. Plus there is one of the clunkiest key-changes ever heard in a chart-topping single.

This was New Edition’s first ever release, and for some reason the UK took to them much quicker than the US (‘Candy Girl’ only made #46 on the Hot 100). In the long run, though, their American chart success would be much more long-lasting, reaching well into the 1990s. The members would also try their hand away from the group, the most prominent career being that of founder Bobby Brown’s (and not always for musical reasons…)

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