Songoftheday 7/12/19 -No no we don't die yes we multiply, anyone test will hear the fat lady sing...
from the albums Pret-A-Porter (Ready To Wear) (Original Soundtrack) and Here Comes The Hotstepper (both 1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 23
Today's song of the day comes from the reggae singer Cecil Campbell, who recorded under the moniker Ini Kamoze. Born in northern Jamaica, he started releasing music in the early 1980s, with little notice outside the reggae community. But it would take until a decade later for him to get his mainstream breakthrough. "Here Comes The Hotstepper", a bouncy midtempo pop-reggae tune about a guy on the lam from the cops, was built around a hook using the "na na na na" chorus from "Land Of A Thousand Dances" (which gave writer Chris Kenner a writing credit). But with a remix that incorporated the rhythm groove of Taana Gardner's disco hit "Heartbeat", along with being added to the soundtrack to the fashion movie Pret-A-Porter starring an ensemble cast including Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett, and the exposure from the movie and Kamoze found himself with his first and biggest success...
"Here Comes The Hotstepper" became Kamoze's first and only top-40 pop hit, topping the American pop chart in December of 1994. The song also spent four weeks at #2 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, while the remix of the song helped it rise to #22 on their Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the single went to #1 in New Zealand and Denmark, and reached the top ten in France (#2), Australia (#2), Spain (#2), Finland (#2), Ireland (#3), Belgium (#3), the UK (#4), Switzerland (#4), Norway (#4), Sweden (#5), Germany (#6), and Austria (#6). It also peaked at #15 in Canada and #16 in the Netherlands.
With the popularity of the song, Kamoze signed a long-term record deal with East/West-Elektra Records, but by the time his next studio album Lyrical Gangsta came out, his former label Columbia also put out a compilation built around the remixed "Here Comes The Hotstepper" that robbed most of the sales energy from it. Lyrical Gangsta's lead single "Listen Me Tic (Woyoi)" only managed to slip on the pop Hot 100 at #88, and missed the top-40 on the R&B chart at #43. However the club remixes of the track were well-received, and "Listen Me Tic" climbed to #5 on the Dance Club Play chart. He's released a few more albums independently since, with the latest, Tramplin' Down Babylon, arriving in 2016.
As for the Pret-A-Porter (Ready To Wear) movie, it flopped, but the soundtrack is in my opinion one of the best pop film collections of the decade. Besides "Here Comes The Hotstepper", it contained the Janet Jackson B-side gem "70s Love Groove", the CeCe Peniston jam "Keep Givin' Me Your Love", which went to #4 on the Dance Club Play chart, the Dance Club Play chart-topping Perfecto Remix of U2's "Lemon", "Get Wild" from Prince's group New Power Generation, which climbed to #19 in the UK, The Brand New Heavies' top-40 hit "Close To You" (UK #38), and Polish jazz-pop princess Basia's minor British hit "Third Time Lucky" (UK #77). Add in selections from M People, the Rolling Stones, Terence Trent D'Arby, and more and you've got an album really worth seeking out.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the alternative version of the video, which contains nothing from the Pret-A-Porter movie...
And here's Ini performing the song live in 1995...
Up tomorrow: Cuban-American pop star travels back to the disco.
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