This wasn’t a hit for Labi Siffre in 1975 but it’s got a place in pop history, spawning the sample that brought Eminem to the world.
The section in question arrives in the breakdown halfway through, with Siffre’s distinctive electric piano melody to the fore, and the guitar and bass played by Chas & Dave.
It was picked by producer Dr Dre for form the basis of My Name Is, the song that gave Eminem his first hit in 1999 but almost didn’t happen because Siffre, who is openly gay, refused to clear the sample until sexist and homophobic lyrics were removed from the song.
In the sleeve notes to the re-released Remember My Song, the album from which his own song came, Siffre wrote: “Attacking two of the usual suspects – women and gays – is lazy writing. It you want to do battle, attack the aggressors, not the victims.”
Eminem duly went away and removed he offending references to “bitches” and “faggots” (though you can find the original floating around the internet).
Hip hop fans may also recognise the opening of the song, which was used as a sample by Jay-Z on the title track from the album (and film) Streets Is Watching. And the whole song may be familiar to viewers of Better Call Saul from its appearance there.
When this came out in 1975 Siffre had already released six albums and 16 singles in five years, including the hits It Must Be Love, Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying and Watch Me.
Siffre was born and raised in London, with a Nigerian father and a Barbadian/Belgian mother, and grew up as a jazz and blues fan, his guitar style inspired by Jimmy Reed and Wes Montgomery, his vocals by Billie Holiday and Mel Torme.
An all-round very good egg indeed, he came out of retirement in 1987 after he saw a white soldier shooting black children in a TV documentary, Apartheid South Africa, to write and perform Something Inside (So Strong), which became his biggest hit – and an anthem for the anti-apartheid movement.
In the Nineties he published three books of poetry – N*gger (1993), Blood On The Page (1995) and Monument (1997) – tackling themes as diverse as theology and sociology, love and hate, childhood and adulthood, communication, “language, critical thinking and the lack of it, various -isms and the methods by which the mainstream dismisses the marginalised and the dispossessed.”
He met his partner Peter Lloyd in 1964 and they remained together for 50 years until Lloyd’s death in 2014, becoming one of the first couples to tie the knot under the Civil Partnership Act when it came into force in 2005.