David Bowie passed away last night, January 10th, after a long battle with cancer and in the legendary pop star we lost an artist who has a zeal for music, music contributors and a sense of what is fair.
There’s this exchange that’s been floating around today, between Bowie and an MTV executive from 1982. In the back and forth, the British native is asking why more black artist aren’t being played on the channel. His pursuit is based on meritocracy: “There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I’m surprised aren’t being used on MTV.”
While he may not have the hip-hop pedigree of say a James Brown, Bowie was sampled enough (Vanilla Ice, infamously) and allowed, in 1997, Puff Daddy to sample his hit, “Let’s Dance,” which the Hitmen then flipped into “Been Around The World” with some additional help from Lisa Stansfield’s “All Around The World.”
Sidebar: read Nile Rodgers on producing “Let’s Dance“
The video was epic before epic became a click-baiting headline word. It was like Hype Williams and Paul Hunger were playing a game of one-upmanship. The clip featured Puff playing an espionage role, equal parts “Face/Off” and Bond, as the producer parachuted into Tunisia to stop a villain (Why, Clef?!) from poisoning J.Lo. He saved her, then they did the tango. All in a day’s work. Yeah, Epic.
The song and video proved to be a boon for Puff. The combo followed “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down,” “I’ll Be Missing You” and “It’s All About The Benjamins” to cement the Bad Boy Records mogul as the pole position winner when it came to the year. By the time he got to “Victory” he was was so far ahead of the game he passed everyone twice.
In any event, without Bowie’s blessing, we wouldn’t have gotten said song and said video.
Thank you, David Bowie, for the gift and may you rest in peace.
Have a listen below to a mashup between the two tracks, DB’s “Lets’d Dance” and PD’s “Been Around The World.”
