Hit Parade: Blame It on the Feign, Part 1

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For a musical project that’s synonymous with deceit, Milli Vanilli sold an awful lot of records. They also have quite a legacy: a blend of pop, dance and rap that now seems commonplace but was still relatively novel in 1989. If you’ve danced to Europop that fronts like hip-hop, you’re living in a world Milli Vanilli helped create. In this episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy breaks down the history of Milli Vanilli mastermind Frank Farian’s musical career: from his days with Boney M, a hit-making, half-real, half-fake group that was a precursor to his later scheme; to his enlistment of European model–dancers Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan to be the faux-frontpeople of Milli Vanilli. From MTV News to Behind the Music, the Milli Vanilli story has been told and retold. But the Billboard chart feats achieved by Rob and Fab, and their accomplices, reveal just how addicted America was to their music—and maybe, how they won that Grammy. Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart. For the full episode right now, sign up for Slate Plus and you'll also get The Bridge, our Trivia show and bonus deep dive. Click here for more info. Podcast production by Asha Saluja with help from Rosemary Belson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, hip parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode.
0:05.9	Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this
0:11.3	episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. You can try it for a month for
0:17.9	just one dollar, and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism
0:24.3	and podcasts. Just go to Slate.com slash hip parade plus. You'll get to hear every hip parade
0:31.9	episode in full the day it arrives. Plus, hip parade, the bridge, our bonus episodes with guest
0:38.9	interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join that's
0:46.0	Slate.com slash hip parade plus. Thanks. And now, please enjoy part one of this hip parade episode.
1:00.2	Welcome to hip parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits
1:06.3	from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfee, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's
1:12.0	Why is this song number one series on today's show? Do you recognize this funk instrumental
1:19.1	I'm playing? This is The Soul Searchers, led by Washington DC go-go music pioneer Chuck Brown
1:26.8	with their 1974 jam Ashley's Roach clip. Don't feel bad if it's not ringing a bell yet. It wasn't
1:35.4	a big chart hit, but part of this song was a hit. Part of many, many hits. In just a few seconds,
1:44.2	we're going to hear a drum break that should be instantly familiar if you listen to hip hop
1:50.2	about 30 to 35 years ago. Here it comes.
2:04.3	The Ashley's Roach clip drum break is a formative beat in rap history,
2:09.9	sampled on dozens of tracks. It's the beat that powered hip hop classics by golden age rappers
2:16.6	T. LaRocke, Eric B. Edgar Kim, slick Rick, chill Rob G, the ghetto boys, two-pock, and ice cube
2:25.2	among many others. And it also anchored several big hits by, well, these guys, who I guess you could
2:34.7	say do rap. This is Girl You Know It's
2:46.4	True, the debut global smash by Millie Vanille. Nominally, that's the name of the dance pop duo
	...

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