Labi Siffre
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"My favourite music-metadata discovery? After a long search, I managed to track down a copy of Labi Siffre's rare album 'Remember My Song' for the killer track 'I Got The...', which has a *huge* break sampled by, among others, Eminem on 'My Name Is...' Checking out the credits on the album, I noticed that bass and guitar players where none other than Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock, popular English session musicians at the time. That meant that one of the fattest bass breaks in hiphop was played by a member of the oft-derided cockernee novelty act Chas & Dave. As a spurs fan, this was priceless..." --Matt Locke |
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Labi Siffre (born 25 June 1945) is an English poet, songwriter and singer most widely known as the writer and singer of (Something Inside) So Strong, It Must Be Love and "I Got The", the sampled rhythm track of which is the basis of Eminem’s breakthrough hit single My Name Is.
Album Discography
- Labi Siffre (1970)
- The Singer And The Song (1972)
- Crying Laughing Loving Lying (1972)
- For The Children (1973)
- Remember My Song (1975)
- Happy (1975)
- So Strong (1988)
- Man of Reason (1991)
- The Last Songs (1998)
- Monument (Spoken Word) (1998)
- The Last Songs (Re-mastered) (2006)
Cover versions
- Olivia Newton-John (English-born, Australia-raised singer and actor) covered "Crying Laughing Loving Lying" in 1975 on her gold certified MCA album titled "CLEARLY LOVE" (catalog # MCA-2148). Olivia and Labi's paths have crossed more than once over the years, as illustrated by the fact that Labi and Olivia dueted on a live version of her # 1 pop hit "You're the One That I Want" (written by John Farrar, and originally featured as a duet with John Travolta in the 1978 film adaptation of the musical, "Grease").
- Madness covered "It Must Be Love" in 1981. The song reached #4 in the UK charts and #33 in the U.S. in 1983. Labi Siffre also made a cameo appearance in the music video.
- "(Something Inside) So Strong" was covered by Kenny Rogers in 1989 (and became the title track to a hit album). The song was also covered by Vanessa Bell Armstrong in 1988 and again by a host of gospel artists as a tribute to Rosa Parks in the mid-90's. Also featured in the hit BBC comedy 'Gavin and Stacey' late 2009 where it was very successfully adapted into a Welsh chapel christening ceremony
- The Flying Pickets covered the song in their 1994 Album, The Warning.
- Michael Ball also released a cover of the song in 1996, which reached Number 40 in the UK.
- It has also been covered by Rik Waller in 2002, when it was released as a single.
- Fatboy Slim sampled Rosetta Hightower’s cover of Labi Siffre’s “A Little More Line” (from his 1970 debut album Labi Siffre) for the song “That Old Pair of Jeans” on Fatboy's 2006 album “Why Try Harder”
- Kanye West used a sample of "My Song" in "I Wonder" on his album "Graduation".
- Jay-Z sampled "I Got The" — the same song Eminem sampled for "My Name Is" — for his hit "Streets Iz Watching."
- RJD2's song "Making Days Longer", from his album Since We Last Spoke, is a cover of Siffre's "Bless the Telephone", from The Singer And The Song. Siffre is credited as writer of the original song in the liner notes.
