Sunday Foot-tapping Session — Praise You by Fatboy Slim

Album: You’ve come a long way, Baby | Producer: Norman Cook[Fatboy Slim] | Genre: Big Beat[Electronica]

The song was released as a single in UK on 4th January 1999; Yes, about 21 years back! Though it got very popular and is still remixed and heard in music festivals, it won many accolades for it’s music video, which costed them $800!

The song is based on a 1975 song by the actress and soul singer Camille Yarborough called “Take Yo’ Praise.” She released just one album, and this was the last track. It was a very obscure song, but Fatboy Slim found it at Camden market in north London, on a compilation CD and sampled it.

Yarborough’s vocal is used throughout the song. She made much more money on royalties from this song than she did on her own album.

Armed with nothing but an Atari, a pair of S950 samplers and his faithful TB303, Cook started working on the sample.

The magic moment that led to the creation of ‘Praise You’ came when Cook matched the Camille Yarbrough vocal to a loop of a piano riff lifted from a demonstration record for JBL speakers. “It was the rehearsal of the band before they recorded a tune,” he explains. “And that’s why it’s so badly recorded. That’s why there’s scratches all over it, and that’s why if you listen to the loop you can actually hear someone talking. But I just really loved that piano riff, and as soon as I put the vocal over it, the sum total of the parts became a third song.”

As an international club DJ, little did Cook know that he had produced UK’s no. 1 hit single of 1999. He also went on to become the pioneer of a new electronica genre called big beat.

Timbre:

• Vox Sample: Song by the actress and soul singer Camille Yarborough called “Take Yo’ Praise.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGQbtyctPmE
• Drum beats: Big beats were created using sounds off 2 different drum sets playing the same beats at the same time and no panning
• Bass: The distinctive rolling bass line on ‘Praise You’ meanwhile was written and played by Cook. “The bass line was played on a keyboard using bass-playing chops to write a slight derivative of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ kind of bass line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgnClrx8N2k
• Piano Sample: Loop of a piano riff lifted from a demonstration record for JBL speakers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVZFMLQn13Q [Skip forward to 2:41 of the video]
• Percussions: They seem to be a combination of bongo & tambourine kinds. The tambourine is to the right and bongo to the left in perceived space

Perceived Space Graph:

Fun facts:

• One of the other standout features on ‘Praise You’ is how Yarbrough’s vocal sample features a time-stretch stutter on the line “praise you like I should-d-d-d-d-d” . Cook says “One of the reasons I stuck with the 950 rather than moving onto an S1000 was it had reverse loop and it was much easier to get a smooth loop because it becomes like a vibrato warble rather than a click click click. You could just move the loop point fractionally by millionths of a second until it sounded right.”
• The video that’s making bad dancers look good was shot after Fatboy Slim’s performance at the Mayan Theatre in LA. It was shot on the lam outside a Westwood theatre, in one take in under 10 minutes. The dancers are from the fictional “Torrance Community Dance Group,” the theatre managers and bouncers appearances were unscheduled, as was a break dancing Michael Jackson impersonator (who was cut from the video).

The video helped break ‘Praise You’ worldwide, including in America, but MTV famously turned it down at first. “They said it was of inferior quality to be broadcast and looked like it was filmed on hand-held cameras, which of course it was,” Norman says. “And then VH1 started playing it and everyone started liking it, and it went on to win six MTV Awards. But originally MTV turned it down, and the American record company wanted to make another video. ‘That’s just stupid, and you’re not taking it seriously’, they said.”

Closing:

The otherwise intense mood of the original sample is beautifully transformed to a fun tune with simple sounds that add typical Fatboy Slim character. That coupled with the visual genius of Spike Jonze makes this a classic. The song can be listened and played anytime and anywhere.

NOTE: This is the first review from Sunday Foot-tapping Sessions series. If there are suggestions, song requests, other details, etc. that you want me to cover, leave me a response.