90’s Revival Is In Full Skippety Swing

At the pub on Tuesday getting some dinner I noticed that the internet radio stream, many of the house tracks sampling late 80’s to early 00’s pop, big beat, house and r’n’b, but mostly around the sweet spot of the mid-late 90’s.

From FLO and Sk*ill*x bringing back Missy Ellott for that bomp-a-bomp bomp, to Rita Ora resurrecting 1998’s Praise You from Fatboy Slim to a resurgence in bastard pop styles, speed garage and samples and skippy piano house…it seems to be that 90’s/early 00’s revival is in full swing.

This post is an extension of the latest podcast 383 which has a skippety piano house mix for Pride. This is because of Eurovision which featured the new Rita Ora track, Gustaph’s Belgian entry which was a re-rub of ballroom culture and nods to Technotronic and woo yeah breaks and organ house, and also ‘Free’ by Ultra Nate in the semi-finals drag queen medley along with En Vogue and Jessie Ware’s recent house’disco effort. Given the massive viewership of Eurovision, I think the 90’s are back!

It’s been brewing for a long time, but I think Dua Lipa borrowing the White Town – Your Woman (1997) sample was probably the start, along with Beyonce sampling organ house – namely Robin S – Show Me Love from 1993 and bounce on Break Your Soul..and has gone overground in the last few months.

So what tunes played at the pub? Well these were knew to me, but I knew the songs…which basically sums up why people do this, it’s totally new for the people who weren’t there, and also reassuring to us old uns – so works on both demographics. I missed looking up an earlier house track that was sampling Fuu-Ge-La by the Fugees (1995) – or the original Teena Marie Ooh La La sample, but it’s still a 90’s ref since I think most people know it via the Fugees now.

Alok & James Arthur’s Work With My Love leans heavily on a sample used heavily in Lola’s Theme from the Shapeshifters – originally 2003, but in that same skippy classic style.

Then a more recent re-rub of Olive’s handbag/trance classic ‘Not Alone’ (1996) from German producers Vize and Moguai with Anna Grey…skippety swung beats intact.

Less skippety but more tribal was this take on Youssou N’Dour & Neneh Cherry’s 7 Seconds (1994) from by Joezi ft Coco & Papa Diouf – this is also very recent, released a month ago.

And finally in the ‘how did they do that?’ we have a seemingly legit Italian mashup from Nari & Steve Tosi – Rock You Up. I usually avoid Michael Jackson here, but this isn’t using the vocal, and I’ll let you discover what the vocal is.

More late 80’s but skippety, and a rare thing, a legal? mashup (it’s on Apple Music, Qobuz, Amazon download, Spotify, Shazam, Beatport etc.)release using a major source.

So I expect this mid-late 90’s to early 00’s trend to continue, we’ve already seen a lot of new faces in the mashup community emulating that early 00’s bastard pop bootleg style, and that seems to reflect on the bigger charts as well.