FATMAN SCOOP ft CROOKLYN CLAN – "Be Faithful"

The first time I heard this was in I think 2012 or so – I was trying the music sorting technique suggested by yourself called “the mincer” to go through the unweildy collection of mp3s I had acquired over the years, including a folder with every UK number one. My reaction on this coming up was equal parts “what the hell *is* this?” and “actually hold on, this is kind of amazing” and it survived several cycles as it was always a joy when it popped up.

CAN’T. STOP. SHOUTING.

Ahem, My main memory of this song is hearing it played at monstrous volume by the folks down my corridor in my university halls, when they were in a party mood. Which was, it seemed, all the damn time.

This was definitely 2001-2002. So I was surprised to read that this only was a number 1 in 2003. Maybe, as comment #2 says, my noisy neighbours picked up on it form a student club night …

Oh dear. I fear I am going to be a party pooper here. I could get on board with the reassessment of Tomcraft, but not Fatman Scoop. This actually took five whole years to get to number one.

It had first appeared in 1998, but largely, as discussed above, because of the vast amount of clearance issues with the samples used that had to be addressed, it took a long time before it could be granted a commercial release, in that time slowly building up as a club favourite, and hence why the man himself was surprised when this did hit the top. I don’t think there’s any other comparable example of this kind of bunny in terms of its journey there to my knowledge.

I recall him being almost in tears on the phone to Wes Butters when he announced this as being number one on Radio 1’s chart show. I’m sure he’s a lovely man really – as his time on Celebrity Big Brother proved – but ‘Be Faithful’ is all a bit too much on my meek ears even now, so I can’t really give it anything more than a 2, but I can understand why certain people still love it now, and why it was successful. I just can’t see or indeed hear it for myself.

#2 watch, and to be honest there wasn’t anything else that was worthy of challenging this over the two weeks it was at the top – Blue launching their third album but treading water musically speaking with the Gary Barlow co-penned ballad ‘Guilty’ on week one, and a returning Kevin Lyttle on its second week, Atomic Kitten claiming highest new entry at #3 with ‘If You Come To Me’, which was cut from the same cloth as pretty much every single they’d done for the two years previous to that, and would’ve been a non-event had it made the top.

A cacophony with just a few hints of inspiration scraping through the murk. The enforced jollity reminds me a bit of Steve Walsh. Best part, by far? The female vocals.

3

Had no idea which way Tom was gonna go – a 2? and 8? It splits opinion a lot as already demonstrated in the comments and I’m very pleased with the 7, although I’ll go one higher to 8. Lopsided locked grooves in a No. 1 are very much in my realm of interest yessiree , and a shouty man saying a bunch of nonsense over this one = moreso. I can hear Death Grips and a few DJ Hell tracks approaching in the rear view mirror, too. As tuneless and captivating as Bound 4 da Reload.

Second sample-driven number one with a Faith Evans chorus, and one thing is for sure, this is much the more fun of the two.

In a British context, it’s a novelty record that’s unapologetic about it, certainly that’s how it felt to those of us for whom it emerged out of nowhere seemingly without any context with that weird animated video, looking like a PS1 game with a “big head mode” cheat code activated (you got a fair few of those in the PS1 era). I was one of those, as was my brother, I think we liked it as pure silliness then, I still like it as pure silliness now.

Tom mentions imperial-phase Scooter as a logical (no pun intended) corollary to this. Inevitably Fatman Scoop eventually turns up on a Scooter record, “Behind The Cow.” Complete with a WTF-bomb of a tempo change that made me want to use it in spin classes at one point.

The way this song eventually got to #1 wasn’t that unusual back then – lots of dance records (too many to mention) became chart hits sometimes years after developing as club smashes.
The big reveal here is that some hip-hop records also started developing the same way. You had M.O.P.’s “Ante Up” (Remix), which reached #7 in 2001 almost a year after it originally came out. You’d have Ice Cube’s “You Can Do It” hitting #2 in 2004, five years after its original release. And this one, of course.
But then these were (still) the days of the physical single. Club records lent itself to these kinds of phenomena, as the natural progression would go from either being first released on vinyl to attract the DJ market or make the rounds as promos/white labels/test pressings/etc. aimed at the key DJ’s; in any case, the trick was to let those tracks build themselves over time, with the goal of eventually being so big in clubland that radio DJ’s in specialist slots would feature them and thus create the final buzz that would lead to those records being added to daytime playlists (and videos being created for them, let’s not forget that either) and, finally, general release for the chart victory lap.
All this to pose the inevitable question: wouldn’t this be the era’s equivalent of today’s virality? I mean, think about it. Lizzo recently had two hits with songs which were two (“Truth Hurts”) and three (“Good As Hell”) years old by the time they finally reached critical mass. And I might be wrong, as I’m not clubbing the way I did until about 2013, but I certainly don’t remember any big club record from the last few years becoming a chart smash over time the way it used to be, hence my era parallels.
Any thoughts on this?

I recall an interview with the artist Kindness from a few years ago in which he posits that ‘Chic Cheer’ is great but ‘Love Like This’ is just greater for slowing down while beefing up that sampled hook. So hats off to the Fatman for turning that idea up to 11.

See also Panjabi MC’s ‘Mundian Te Bach Ke’ which first appeared on his 1998 album before charting four years later with a tacked on Jay Z guest spot. This phenomenon is not really much different from the commonplace trend across club music throughout chart history (with one of the remixes often, tho not always, usurping the original in popularity) though.

#13-The weird thing about You Can Do It being a hit in 2004 was that it was an explicit tie-in to a film from 2000 (Next Friday), with clips in the video and everything, that not only had come and gone and been long forgotten outside of HMV DVD sales racks, but had been followed by a (further) sequel which had met the same fate too. Quite where the momentum for that came from remains a mystery to me.

(Obv #16 hints at this already but it seems viable to me for YCDI too regarding FNP’s remix)

I was going to say “what sort of clubs played this?” then realised the answer was probably “the regular clubs that the majority of people go to, which I had a few bad experiences with in the late-90s and then avoided even when I was going out clubbing three times a week from ’99 to ’04, and which probably weren’t nearly as bad as I assumed they were.”

#23: To perhaps support your suggestion I found myself at the Fez club in Putney one night in 2003 around this time (I don’t quite remember hearing ‘Be Faithful’ but definitely got Blu Cantrell’s ‘Breathe’ and Xtina & Lil Kim’s ‘Can’t Hold Us Down’ among the slew of R&B hits of the time). Whatever the event itself was called I have no idea but a genuinely fun night and good crowd and wish I’d gone…more than this one time.

We do seem to be on a classic run – the last ten songs average 6.7, the highest since the late 80s. (And it probably would have been higher if Ignition had been given a score.)

The Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) of the 2000s. Either way, I like it as much as that Outhere Brother’s single, i.e. not very much. Mr Scoop is headache inducing music in my opinion. 1/10 I’m sorry to say.

RIP Isaac Freeman III, collapsed on stage during a concert and never recovered. He was 53.