One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.
I got a letter from the government the other day
I opened and read it. It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me giving a damn, I said never.Public Enemy, “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” 1988
Tricky was doing what no one else was doing musically in 1994, as he was pretty much most other years. His audacity (or complete naivete) as an artist knew no bounds, being largely how he got female vocalist Martina Topley-Bird to sing Chuck D’s none-more-Chuck D rap lyrics from Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” over an exhilarating rock-dance backing. Which she did in her uniquely seductive tones, bringing melody and wispiness to words that once seemed inseparable from the hip-hop frontman’s testosterone-pumped New York baritone, so renowned for emanating righteous anger in the face of injustice and prejudice.
It was consequently hard to know what the oft-called “trip-hop pioneer” from Bristol UK had, in fact, delivered in the track he simply called “Black Steel” – but there was no doubt it made for one of the most original and exciting singles of the times. No doubt too that it made, in an unprecedented way, for one great cover.
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