60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Return of the Mack”—Mark Morrison

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Rob reminisces on his first days working in a newsroom and watching ‘ThunderCats’ outtakes, all while riding on the sleek R&B roads of memory lane when looking back at Mark Morrison’s big hit ��Return of the Mack,” along with other hip-hop-influenced '90s R&B songs. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Justin Charity Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Additional Productional Support: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The time has come to get ready for the 2022 World Cup. And what better way to prepare than by revisiting the World Cup's most amazing goals? I'm Brian Phillips. I'm making a podcast about the history of the men's World Cup, told through the stories of 22 iconic goals. The show's called 22 Goals. It's out now on the Ringer Podcast Network, and we're having so much fun. Hello, friends. A quick note to say that we will be taking next week off for Thanksgiving and so forth, but we will return on Wednesday, November 30th.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, if that's your thing, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks. As we all know, the internet was first invented specifically to amuse me with a video compilation of off-color bloopers from the mid-80s after-school cartoon series Thundercats. And keep your foot off that blasted Sammel flange. What the fuck is a Samo flange? I have to do that again. Hilarious. There's me at 22 years old. My first job ever.

My first constant exposure to the internet ever. Autumn 2000. I'm a lowly arts writer at a humble Midwestern Altweekly. That paper is long gone now. What's that? Kids, you don't know what an Alt Weekly is. Too bad. They're pretty much all.

long gone now. What's that? What killed all the alt-weeklies? Let me ask you this. You ever buy anything off Craigslist? You have. You killed the all-weeklies. Nice going. My job at this paper was to write about local bands and fart around on e-bombsworld.com. I was extremely good at half my job. You've got to snap out of it, Lion O. Call the Thundercatch before. Shut up, you fuck. I was extremely good at two-thirds of my job. The other part of my job was to angrily compose an off-color parody version of Edgar Allen Poe's classic 1845 poem, The Raven, for my Yahoo fantasy baseball message board. The morning after my beloved team, the dirty Sanchez posse was eliminated from the playoffs. I was so pissed.

Quote the Raven, fuck Rob Nen. That's Rob Nen closer for the San Francisco Giants. he sucked. Two B's in Rob. I'd rather not say what the extra B stands for. I especially kicked ass at that part of my job. And after I got done kicking ass at that, I'd reward myself by watching the Thundercats bloopers again. I should have known the territory didn't mean us any harm

when the sword of omens didn't obey me. And anyway, it was just plain stupid to assume it might be bad. Just what the fuck am I talking about? Absolutely hilarious. people sometimes ask me, why are you like this? And one answer is that my first day of work at this paper, my first job out of college, day one as a professional journalist, my new editor is like, check this out.

He's got this VHS tape. Everyone at the paper crowds under this weird background because he got a TV with a VCR, and he pops in the tape in its bootleg footage of a local TV newscaster's false teeth falling out of his mouth on the air. The guy's like, today, and blah. And we all just watched it for like a half hour and laughed our asses off,

rewinding, picking out freeze frames. Somebody's like, was it something he ate? And a guy in the back yells, yeah, a shit sandwich. My first day of work, I never set foot in that room again. This story, TV anchors, false teeth fall out live on the air was our cover story that week. My first issue of anything as a professional journalist. Think about the tone that sets for my career. career. That's why I'm like this. Thundercats ruled, man. Even the legit non-off color, non-blooper,

original version of Thundercats ruled. It's the mid-80s. You're in third, fourth, fifth grade. You rush home after school. You get your fruit roll-ups. You get your strawberry pop tarts. You get your chicken and a biscuit crackers. You get a fresh pitcher of berry blue Kool-Aid. You get scraped off the ceiling afterward. You flip on channel three or channel five or channel seven. I forget, and there they are. There it is. All time. after-school cartoon theme song. If I'd have played it straight, could I have convinced you that that was like a deep cut

Kate Bush demo or something? I feel like I could have convinced you. Same with this shit. Could I have convinced you that the screeches in the Silverhawks theme song were Yoko Ono samples? I feel like I could have convinced you. Silverhawks ruled also. Those dudes were in space.

I believe. Thundercats and Silverhawks, I think, comprised an hour-long block. Two great shows made greater by the camaraderie between them, the Rayquan and Ghostface of after-school cartoons. There are fewer amusing

off-color silverhawks bloopers, but I am pleased to report that there aren't zero amusing off-color Silverhawks bloopers. Oh, man, I feel like I've been shot at and missed and shit at and hit.

hilarious. I think that was the guy in space who wore a cowboy hat. Or perhaps you were more into G.I. Joe. Do you think if Johnny Cash had made 30 American recordings records with Rick Rubin, if that whole era had just never ended? Do you think Johnny Cash would have done a somber, poignant cover of the G.I. Joe theme song? I don't like his 30th American Recordings album? I think so. He never gives up.

He's always there. If you've spent even 10 seconds of your life on eBombsworld.com, you are well aware that G.I. Joe inspired a thriving ecosystem of pre-peak internet hilarity. Nice catch-blank, oh, Niño. But too bad your ass got sad. G.I. Joe. You had to be there.

The G.I. Joe PSA parody videos weren't a big whoop until 2003, I guess, but I don't care. Time has collapsed. And anyway, it appears that back in the day, Teddy Riley, singer, songwriter, producer, an architect of the electrifying late 80s, early 90s, hip-hop, and R&B hybrid known as New Jack Swing. Teddy was more of an inspector gadget guy. If you didn't know this is called the show. If you didn't know this is called the show, Dougie, friend. and Slick Rick, 1985, the B-side is Lottie-Doddy.

It's in the conversation for the greatest rap single ever born. Teddy Riley was in high school in Harlem when Doug E. Fresh came over to his house one day and asked Teddy to help out with the production. Teddy had a few ideas. Being in school, we wanted to see Inspector Gadget, didn't we? Teddy is on stage here at the Red Bull Music Academy Festival in 2017. The Red and Black hats Teddy is wearing in this video. I want that hat for Christmas. Forget I said that.

No way I could pull off that hat. Because, you know, that was a song that I learned, you know, teach myself how to play. So I said, I'm going to learn this. Do, do, do, de, do de, do de, de, do de. I'm going to be straight with you. I don't know if there are Inspector Gadget bloopers or parody videos or whatever. And I'm not about to look that up. That's going to get so weird and porny so fast.

know it. I have learned to honor this impulse when I have this impulse to avoid Googling something on my work computer. Teddy is indulging the Red Bull interviewer's question about Inspector Gadget. He's setting the scene. Local rap hero Dougie Fresh is over at Teddy's house. Teddy's got an Oberheim DX drum machine and an early skeletal version of the show. First thing Teddy says is that he tuned down the drums to approximate that low 808 sound. But then Teddy argues that inspect The Inspector Gadget is not the most important element, is not the true hook of his version of this song, the show. The Inspector Gadget riff is not even the most important part of the Inspector Gadget part of the song. That made the song.

That made the whole song. The Shaker. That drum machine shaker makes the song. This is a beat that scratches your back the whole time you're listening to it. it. You put Slick Rick over this beat and he sounds immaculate. He sounds immaculately pornographic, even when he's making breakfast cereal references. cartoons. No wrong answer. Jump to Slick Rick's debut album,

The Great Adventures of Slick Rick in 1988 and the Shakers everywhere. The shaker is Slick Rick's signature now. You get a little bit of shaker on the opening track, which is called Treater Like a Prostitute. You get quite a bit more shaker on the closing track, which is

called Lick the Balls. So who stands, who falls, who crowds this one that DJ Falls. Lick the Balls. Such a complex wave of emotions when I realized that lick the balls was an excellent example of the Shaker B. Part of me was like, oh, please don't make me say that. And another part of me was like, this is the greatest day of my life.

Why am I like this? In any way, we can agree that Slick Rick and the Shaker achieved true immortality on a little tune called Children's Story. Grab the pregnant lady, I pulled out the automatic, pointed out ahead, he said the gun was full of let he told a copy. Back off for honey his dead. Deep in his heart, he knew he was wrong, so we let the lady go and he starts to run on. I do apologize, but I picked the gnarliest lyrical part of this song just to illustrate that the backscratch beat is still immaculate,

even when Slick Rick's at his gnarliest. The journalist Jeff Chairman Mao interviewed Slickrick for the Red Bull Music Academy back in 2011. Nobody gives rappers of a certain age more respect than the Red Bull Music Academy. Make it that way you will. And they talked about the through line from the show to children's story and beyond. And Slick Rick says, it just worked. You know what I mean? It's like if you find the shaker and the shaker works and you can use it again, you use it again.

If it don't, then it don't. You know what I mean? End quote. I do know what he means, actually. So we push into the 90s now. And Slick Rick is pretty much literally rap royalty. And he's going to get sampled about eight billion times going forward. including by these fellows.

That is indeed slick Rick on lotty-doddy, bopping along in the background of the pornographic, but also somehow G-rated, Color Me Bad Jam, I want to sex you up. Two Ds in bad to convey that they're extra bad. Great song, I don't want to talk about it. Sorry.

That same impulse that told me to leave Inspector Gadget alone, that siren's going off again. If I talk about this song at all, I'm going to end up rambling for 20 minutes about the line we can do it till we both wake up. Like the logistical, forget it. Forget it. Great song.

Ficked up song, but great song. Great Slick Rick sample. No shaker, though. We got to get the shaker in there. We have not yet achieved peak slick Rick sample. Absolutely perfect. There exists. No house party.

No junior high dance. No bar mitzvah. No quintanera. No wedding. No funeral. That is not improved. exponentially by the addition of Montel Jordan's 1995 classic. This is how we do it.

A 400% increase in good vibes. The second you hear his voice guaranteed. A beat that scratches your back the whole time you're dancing on the wedding cake table. Watch yourself up there. This is how rap and pop and R&B history gets made. The decade-spanning arc from hit song to hit song. The Royal Lineage.

Let's do another one. Let's do another one a little faster. This is more bounce to the ounce from the funk band Zapp, two P's in Zapp just because Zapper from Dayton, which puts them in the running for funkiest thing to ever emerge from Ohio. It's like the Ohio players, then Zapp, than me, I guess. More Bounce to the Outs came out in 1980s. So Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz.

They're married. They're the bassist and drummer, respectively, for Talking Heads, one of my favorite rock bands all time. And now Tina and Chris are hanging out at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, as one does. They're writing songs for their new side project, Tom, Tom Club. They seize on more bounce to the outs. In his memoir, Chris will praise the Zapp song's slower, funkier tempo, which was very relaxed and sexy while still maintaining a raw, hard edge. In a vulture interview, Chris will add that Zapp achieved a laid-back kind of groove as opposed to a hyper-c cocaine kind of.

groove. End quote. Take his word for it. Tina and Chris decide to write a song like that. Here it comes. So they write a song called Genius of Love. I am not a scientist or a philosopher or a theologian. I'm just an ordinary guy, an extremely funky, ordinary guy. But there is clearly some immense intangible power, a scientific and philosophical and spiritual force animating the Tom Tom Club song, Genius of Love, came out in 1981. For my money, one of the most infectious and insidious hooks in pop music history. I mean infectious and insidious in the positive sense, not like the cocaine sense. I saw a Tom Tom Club show in New York City in 2011. There were people on stage named DJ Jinseng and Mystic Bowie. I described this show in print as having a

peewee's playhouse vibe, the classic Saturday morning kit show Pewee's Playhouse. I'm a professional journalist. I can confirm that Genius of Love is still infectious and insidious and relaxed and funky and childlike, even when performed by and also for a roomful of like 30 to 60 year olds. And so Genius of Love, arguably to a greater extent than anyone talking headsong, if you want to get mega nasty in the positive sense, genius of love enters the American pop music canon and has also been sampled eight billion times. And moreover, every one of those eight billion samples feels necessary.

This one, for example. Mariah Carey's Fantasy from 1995. The single best song of the 90s, according to Pitchfork. I'm into it. Top five songs from the 90s according to pitchfork. Number five, Missy Elliott's The Rain. Number four, Liz Fares fucking run. Number three, Elias, are you that somebody?

Number two, Bjork's Hyperballad. Number one, the fantasy remix. I guess I should clarify with old dirty bastard. I'm sorry, but we don't have time to play the beginning of ODB's verse when he says, me and Mariah go back like babies with pacifiers. We run a tight ship here. There's no time. Of course, I'm just kidding.

Me and Mariah, go back like babies with pacifiers. That's right. Keep the fantasy hot like fire. Genius of Love Wise, we've stripped the track down to just the drums at this point, but fantasy somehow retains the original tracks immense. intangible power. And that is due in part to ODB saying me and Mariah go back like babies with pacifiers. But clearly the genius of love drums themselves radiate a potent scientific and philosophical and spiritual force. And so the scientific and philosophical and spiritual question

before us today is, would this song work without these drums? My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 79th episode. of 60 songs that explain the 90s, and today we are talking about Return of the Mac by the British R&B singer Mark Morrison from his 1996 album, also called Return of the Mac. I can't decide if this song would work without the genius of love drums, but it definitely wouldn't work without the Oh my God. I guess I should clarify that one of the producers behind this song, a Danish producer and DJ named Mick Hansen, better known as Cutfather, he insists that Return of the Mac does not directly sample genius of love. Mel magazine did a great piece on Return of the Mac in 2022,

written by the reporter and critic Tim Greerson. And Cuthfather says, obviously it's very close to those drums. It's very much like that. Mariah Carey also had a song out using a similar type of drums, fantasy. He also says, at the time, there wasn't a huge issue about clearing samples. Obviously, today it would be a completely different thing. End quote. Okay, I don't want beef with a guy named Cutfather. That's my policy. I do, however, enjoy the musicalogical phrase.

It's very much like that. Remember when Vanilla Ice went on MTV to explain how Ice Ice Baby did not sample Queens under pressure? This is a great moment in journalism mystery. This is what made me want to be a journalist in the first place. Ding, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. That's the way there's ghosts. ours goes, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding that little bitty change. It's not the same.

This is very much like that. Vanilla I is saying that little bitty change. I love it. He's adorable. So listen, I am morally and philosophically opposed to the phrase one-hit wonder, as I find this phrase to be rude. And also the term hit, while somewhat quantifiable, there is some wiggliness. to this term hit,

if you'll forgive the term wiggliness. For example, Mark Morrison had five charting hits total in

England all off the return of the Mac record. If you find that compelling, which maybe you don't, if you don't live in

England. There is also here in 2022 growing concern that the very concept of the one-hit wonder

itself is in peril. There are fewer one-hit wonders now than in the 80s and 90s. In 2015,

this data website, Priceonomics, went semi-viral with a post called The Death of the One Hit Wonder. And they used, you know, data. A graph showing artists who only had one song ever chart in the Billboard Hot 100, the definitive American singles chart. And it's a steady downward curve from 1965 to 2015. Songs spend more time overall in the Hot 100 now, months as opposed to weeks. So there's less room for newer shit. And fewer pop stars, too. the hugest artists dominate more and more of the Hot 100 now.

As I speak, this week's Hot 100 chart, the top 10 is Taylor Swift. 10 Taylor Swift songs from a mid-Taylor Swift album. Sorry, but it's like how film people complain that Marvel movies are crowding out everything else. Taylor Swift is Spider-Man in this analogy, I guess. The consequence for pop music is that you get fewer total flukes like Come on Eileen by Dexie's Midnight Runners or tub-thumping by Chewereman. Chumbawamba. And those songs, because Dexie's Midnight Runners and Chumbawamba did not endure as pop stars in the years to come, sorry, those songs come to define and also perhaps helpfully explain the year, the decade in which they were briefly hit songs, and those artists were briefly pop stars. So come on Eileen helps explain the 80s and tub thumping helps explain the 90s. This phrase one hit wonder, while rude, is itself growing archaic and we will

miss it when it's gone and miss the one-hit wonders when they're gone. All of which to say, all this data and wiggliness aside, for me personally, this is how we do it and Return of the Mac have always come as a package deal for me. Two transcendent mid-90s crossover R&B smashes with palpable hip-hop energy, sung by two dudes who briefly became pop stars but did not endure as pop stars. Sorry. Two all-time classic songs that would sound fantastic tonight. If you played them back to back at a house party or junior high dance or bar mitzvah or quinceaniera or wedding or funeral, respect is due, eternal respect is due.

So let's go back to this guy for a second. Montel Jordan is six. It's Friday night. It's Friday night. And I feel alright. The parties here on the west side. Montel Jordan is six feet eight inches tall. I don't care for it. It's excessive. I'm six-four. I don't like people being taller than me if you want to talk about rude. It's unnatural. It should be illegal to be taller than me. I honestly believe this. Detliff, Shremf, Tom Bryan, and my brother. Those are the three people allowed to be taller than me. Everybody else knock it off. Montel Jordan is from Los Angeles. This is his debut single. This is how we do it is when. of those party songs that made me feel terribly lonely at the time. As a party-averse teenager listening to the radio alone, I'd hear Montel sing the parties here on the west side, and I would have this concrete sensation of not being on the west side, right? I was for sure on the east side. I don't hold that against Montel, of course. It's not his fault. Being six-eight, though, that's for sure his fault.

All the gangbangers forgot about the drive-by feels important that line. This is a rap conversal. R&B song, a G-Funk classic that celebrates and reframes 1995, Los Angeles, coming just three years after the L.A. riots in 92. This is how we do it as explicitly designed as a party, a celebration, a reprieve. Here's Montel talking to the TV show Extra in 95. Yeah, all this negativity went on, but I had some good times growing up here, you know. And if people get a chance to see that, then maybe they can, you know, see South Central Los Angeles. for more than just riots and

and the other stuff that they try and make it seem like it is. And so here he is. 23-year-old 6-8 Montel Jordan signed to the venerable deaf jam records, never coming whack on an old school track, and in fact, flipping

slick Rick's deified shaker back scratch beat into this is how we do it, the number one song in America for seven weeks. Get up on the table with the wedding cake. It's time for the chorus. He can even rap like Slick Rick Sort of

Once upon a time in 90s Montel made no money And life show us slow And all they said was 6-8 he stood And people thought the music that he made was good Dude though Stop talking about how you're 6-8 It's rude

But yeah If you're going to be a one-hit wonder Make this the hit That's my advice But Montel Jordan is not A one-hit wonder Is the other thing His 1995 debut album

also called This Is How We Do It peaked at number 12 on the Billboard album chart and spawned another hit, something for the honeys, something with an apostrophe, numeral for DA, Hunnies with a Z, peaked at number 21 on the Hot 100. He even raps like Slick Rick some more. He double Ellen, and yes, I'm guaranteeing that I won't be felon. Some people call me money, some call me money swinger. Sometimes I bust a rhyme, but I'm an R&B singer. The line, sometimes I bust a rhyme, but I'm an R&B singer,

may be the most 1995 aspect of the Montel Jordan experience, that he felt the need to clarify that distinction. This is how we do it was the first number one song in Def Jam history, Def Jam being historically a rap label. In 1995, Billboard ran an article with a headline, Is hip-hop's growing dominance of R&B an evolutionary step, or is it displacing traditional soul music altogether? Montel, Mary J. Blige, TLC, Brandy,

this notion of R&B singers conversant in rap music and often rapping themselves. This felt like far more of an incursion into R&B in the mid-90s. It felt like an existential threat to R&B. It was not yet a given that hip-hop would come to dominate pop music overall the way it eventually did and very arguably still does. Drake is like 10 years old at this point. Drake ain't at the party on the west side either. This Billboard article ends with Def Jam, Mogul Lear Cohen, bragging, in essence, that Montel Jordan can sing both kinds of music,

straight ahead R&B and rap-driven R&B. Quote, not only will he be singing both ways, he'll be imaged in different styles. He's not afraid of coming out in hip-hop gear or dressing in more traditional R&B attire. End quote, you decide what Montel's wearing on the song called I Wanna. He's not wearing anything.

I guess. The what's up y'all unnerves me a little bit, I have to say. Let's not dwell on it. Iwano is not a hit song by any wiggly definition of the term, but the following year, 1996, Montel Jordan put out his second album called Moore and featuring a modest hit called I Like, featuring, you guessed it, Slick Rick. Pretty body, definitely curvy. And thirdly, the way she died of here, bronze, fitted her superbly. If you want to do a song that rhymes curvy, thirdly, and superbly, you've got to just get the real slick Rick to do that. Here are three facts about Post This Is How We Do It, Montel Jordan. Fact number one, he's put out seven albums total.

The last one released in 2019 and called Masterpiece. That's Masterpiece with the Peace part spelled like War and Peace. He also co-wrote a book with his wife, Christian Jordan, a spiritually inclined self-help book called This Is How We Do It, Making Your Marriage, a masterpiece. Montel and Kristen got married in 1994, the year before he got famous. They are qualified to write a marriage book. Fact number two, Montel Jordan has been an ordained minister and executive pastor at Victory World Church in Norcross, Georgia since 2008. There's a picture of him on the internet wearing a t-shirt that says, I love Jesus and 90s R&B. That's a good shirt. Fact number three, you know that super fucked up TV show, The Masked Singer?

Montel Jordan got eliminated as a contestant on the mass singer like a month ago. He was the Panther, and he got the boot after singing Born to Be Wild. It would be rude of me to say that Montel Jordan came whack on an old school track. That's rude. So let's say that Born to Be Wild does not play to Montel Jordan's strengths. I cannot deal with this show. Man, you got to keep the Mask Singer away from me. It's super fucked up.

Okay, let's move on to a guy who took a radically different approach to pretty much every part of this equation. This guy's approach is like, what if we applied the masked singer vibe to my whole entire life? Mark Morrison was born in 1972 in Hanover, Germany. His parents emigrated to the UK from Barbados, and he grew up primarily in Leicester, England. The sea is silent. There's a sea in Leicester when you spell it. Never mind, he's English. When he was 10 years old, he made his stage debut in a local Lester theater production of Winnie the Pooh.

In 2006, he told The Guardian, I audition for Christopher Robinson. Is that his name? That's not his name. But they cast me as a small black beetle. Guess they wanted to save on a costume, end quote. That's funny. He says, though, that playing a beetle made his parents proud. And he liked that, making his parents proud.

Mark lived in Miami for a little while as a teenage. nature. He absorbed quite a bit of American pop and R&B and hip hop, I think it's safe to assume. But he's back in Leicester by the early 90s. He's 19 years old. He's making music. He's on the dole. He's on the dole because he's English. This is not immediately apparent when you hear Mark Morrison sing. To my mind, the nasal aspect of Mark's singing is far more immediately apparent than the he's English aspect. This song is called Crazy, the final album version of Crazy. And can Confusingly, it's Mark's first hit song in England. The confusion being that it's a song about how chaotic his life has been ever since he had a hit song. I keep looking for an older version of Crazy where he doesn't say ever since I went number one, but he says it even in the original. Either I'm confused or Mark Morrison's entire life is pandemonium or both.

I'm going with both. Starting as a teenager, Mark also had a lot of trouble with the law. And this reputation was not the cultural asset in 1990. 90s Lester that perhaps it might have been in, say, Los Angeles. A guy named Jake Nava, the director of the return of the Mac video. Jake, in that Mel Magazine piece, he says, gangster rap, real gangster energy from an artist was an American thing. The kids who were through the system in England were just not behaving like that.

And he was. He was getting himself into trouble because he came from a bit of a, well, actually, I'm not going to say exactly why he was getting himself into trouble. But he was, and that was part of his appeal. This song is called Let's Get Down. Mark Morrison sings like a rapper. He sings with the deafness, the rhythmic and melodic swagger of a rapper. He sings like a g-funk superstar.

Lester, England is not on the west side of England. It's in the East Midlands. But like that pastor guy said, the party is on the west side, and Mark Morrison is definitely at the party. Hooks everywhere with this guy. Hooks stacked on hooks. The freakie, freakie, freakie, freakie is just stupendous there. I'm sorry about that. It's stupendous when he does it. Stupendous and stupendously nasal.

Our friend Cutfather, Mr. Danish producer guy says in that Mel Magazine jam, he says, Mark had a very special sounding voice. that very nasal kind of tone. You weren't used to hearing it. At one point you'd think, is this a joke or is this for real? But then you got used to it, and then you started to just love it.

Oh, fuck me. This sounds great. End quote. I will back cut father up on that. Listen to the way Mark sings the hook. Let's get down just to throw in an extra hook. Stupendous. And also that other thing.

The greatness and the ugliness of the Mark Morrison experience are ramping up simultaneously as we move from the early 90s to the mid-90s. In 1994, he is involved in a nightclub brawl that ends with a man named Julian Leong stabbed to death. Four years later, in a newspaper article in the Scottish Daily Record, it says the singer punched Mr. Leong in the face and smashed a bottle. He told police he did it to calm the situation, end quote. The trick, I think, is to avoid situations where it becomes necessary to smash a bottle and punch someone in the face just to calm the situation. Mark was not the guy with a knife in that brawl, and he gets arrested, but is ultimately

sentenced to community service. The community service goes quite poorly later. So by 1995, Mark Morrison has spent some time in prison, for other incidents, but he's also self-released some great songs that get him signed to a major label, Warner Electra Atlantic, which now starts releasing his first major label singles. Crazy is the first one. one, let's get down as the second one. Those do all right on the UK charts, but his new A&R guy, a revered DJ and label guy named Mickey D. Mickey D wasn't satisfied. In 2020, talking to M Magazine, Mickey says, we thought we really have one more shot at this. I wasn't feeling the production of this third single. Mark started saying he wanted a ballad for this next single. I thought, you can't put out

a ballad without a hit first. We're just going to die. I wanted us to concentrate. I wanted us to on this other song that we really liked end quote micky d got his way it's time for pandemonium when the bass line comes in right as the first first starts that's when return of the mac achieves true greatness that happens just that fast plenty of pop songs where the bass doesn't come in until the first verse starts that's not exactly a revolutionary songwriting trick it sounds like a revolutionary trick on this song, though, don't it? Mark Morrison started writing Return of the Mac in prison. In 2020, he told a Leicester newspaper, I grew up on the St. Mark's estate. Return of the Mac was written in Wellford Road Prison. I'm from here, end quote. Mark also produced the original version of Return of the Mac, along with a guy named Phil Leg, who'd most notably worked with Desiree that you got to be lady. Love Desiree. Two G's in Phil Leg, just because that original version of Return of the Mac is not in the public domain.

That's the version of Return of the Mac that gets sent to our dear friend Cutfather and his own producing partner, Joel Balmotti. Cutfather, talking to Mel Magazine, does not speak glowingly of the original return of the Mac. He says, it was very, very soft and sounded very slow.

It was just very toothless. It wasn't really catchy. The chorus was obviously catchy. The singing of it was catchy, but the chords around it actually made it less commercial. It was like pop R&B, but in a quite uncool way.

But he also says it was a really cool song. Don't you want to hear that version? The slow, soft, toothless, not catchy, quite uncool version of Return of the Mac? That sounds awesome. Let's pretend that the canonical smash hit Cutmaster and Joe remix of Return of the Mac is a song about Mark Morrison

getting over the heartache of his original quite uncool version of Return of the Mac. Cutmaster and Joe got a few ideas for how to spice up Return of the Mac. First idea, the drums from Genius of Love or drums very close to those drums. Second idea, some new way catchier chords from a 1992 song called Games from an R&B singer named Chuckie Booker. That's Chuckie spelled Chuck with two eyes at the end just because Chuckie's from L.A. I can confirm that this song. games has excellent chords.

Stupendous chords. Truly. Tons of samples in this new vastly improved soon to be colossal version of Return of the Mac. More drums from the French disco master Saron, some noisy bits from the off-sampled Bronx funk band

ESG, vocal fragments from the treacherous three and Digital Underground and run DMC. There's a lot going on here. But there would be a lot going on here if Mark Morrison were the only thing going on here. The Return of the Mac video occasionally clones Mark Morrison twice, so all three of them

can harmonize beautifully with one another. There is a sweetness, a tartness to his voice that is inextricable from his nasalness to his ha, I didn't know he was Englishness, his bad boyness. You may have observed that Return of the Mac is a breakup song, a post breakup song, and I survived a breakup song. A fuck you, you'll regret breaking up with me. song. Mark at one point calls it a comeback song in the song. Tom Bryan, the great stereo gum critic and author who was allowed to be taller than me, called it one of the great

bounceback songs in pop music history, end quote. I won't say that Mark Morrison sounds vulnerable here per se, but I will say that his swagger sounds hard earned. I'm fairly certain he's singing all this pain you said I'd never feel there, but I'm absolutely positive he sings, but I do, but I do, do, do. And he sounds fantastic. This is, of course, the version of Return of the Mac that hits the charts and tops the UK charts and eventually peaks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in America, beaten out only by Mbop by Hanson. That's funny. I reserve the right to find that funny. In 1996, the full Return of the Mac album comes out and eventually sells three million copies worldwide. Mark Morrison is a pop star now.

And very quickly, he learns to further lean into the swagger, the outsized luxury, the more American pop star idea of charming menace. Marks on the cover of the return of the Mac album, Holding Court in a very fancy and comfortable-looking plush blue chair. He's got the sunglasses. He's got the leather outfit. He's dangling a pair of handcuffs. Did you know that Ice Tea, the noted Los Angeles rapper Ice T, co-hosted in the mid-90s, a British TV show about cutting edge black British culture called Badass TV. IceT hosted this show with a singer slash chef slash radio star named Andrea Oliver. That's badass spelled B-A-A-D-A-S-S-S. We got an extra A in there and an extra S on the end to make it extra badass.

There is footage on the internet of Mark Morrison appearing on this program. If you want the truth, Mark is wearing a plush, luxurious blue coat that looks like he made it out of the chair from the return of the Mac album cover. On camera, now he is holding the handcuffs up to his eye looking at the camera through the handcuffs. An iced tea whose own plush, luxurious coat is bright popsicle red, explains to us the deal with the handcuffs. You know what I'm saying? Y'all wondering what these handcuffs are Mark's hand. That means when he's in town handcuff, your woman in the house. house because Mark's coming to get him, you know what I'm saying?

Real live players in the house recognize act like you know what's going down. Bad ass, boy. That's a very helpful explanation, honestly. Let's let Mark speak for himself, though. Here's Mark explaining what Return of the Mac is about. The song, I wrote it, was about it's more like a love relationship, boy and girl, and he wants to go into a higher elevation and she has no confidence in her mind.

So she leaves him for another. He becomes a Mac. she wants him back but it don't happen that's what happened that's what happened ice tea has some other thoughts on this topic but that's enough iced tea for the moment

armed with this information let's return now to what might secretly be the most intriguing moment in the song the mysterious breathy lady during the bridge initially I heard the mysterious breathy lady during the bridge is like a counter argument

within the song, right? I love it when that happens. When the lady the song's about shows up during the song to refute her unflattering characterization in the song, I was working as a waitress in a cartel bar, that much is true.

That energy. I've done that song at karaoke, by the way. But I don't think that's what's happening here now. Now, I think this is the lady dumping Mark and thereby inspiring this song, which in turn becomes Mark. Mark's big break. I love it when that happens as well. That's great. The number two song in America

behind Mbop. I picture a trepidacious music lover standing in a record store in 1997. The Montel Jordan album, This is How We Do It in one hand. The Mark Morrison album, Return of the Mac in the other, trying to decide which one of these CDs to buy for $20. Which song is better? This is how we do it, return of the Mac. Which full album has better songs that aren't those songs? I am pleased to report that this is a win-win proposition, this scenario. The Montel Jordan Records great. What's up, y'all? And the Mark Morrison Records got some jams as well. I'd rather not say what kind of jams exactly. This song's called moan and groan. Mark clarifies at the beginning that this ain't no love song, girl. This is a song.

for the G's. Yeah, got it. See if you can guess what this one's called. You guessed it. Possibly the greatest compliment I can pay Mark Morrison, the singer, is that Mark Morrison, the singer, can make even this sound profound and romantic. Mark is in a jail cell for most of that video for the song, horny. A jail cell watched over by two gyrating ladies, but nonetheless. So yeah, now Mark Morrison's an international pop star and now it's time to a zoo around the world touring and doing promotion and whatnot. But there are complications. In 1997, he spent three months in prison for threatening a policeman with a stun gun. In 1998, he spends an additional year in prison for not completing his court-ordered community service after that nightclub

brawl a few years back. More specifically, here we have a 1998 Scottish newspaper article that begins pop yob mark morrison was jailed for 12 months yesterday for getting his minder to do his community service end quote yob is bad yob is not a compliment in england scotland or anywhere else turns out mark sent his bodyguard to impersonate him and do his community service mopping bathrooms and whatnot this decoy guy had a beard which mark didn't but he wore a pair of mark's sunglasses And wow, I have to say that I am delighted by this part of the story. Just the image of this poor guy showing up and being like, yes, hello, I'm English pop star Mark Morrison here to clean these toilets.

And they're like, no, you're not. And he's like, look at these sunglasses. Would I be wearing Mark Morrison's sunglasses if I wasn't him, me? And they're like, sing this song. If you're Mark Morrison, he's like, uh, return of the bag. And they're like, get the fuck out of here. But no, in actuality, this ploy worked for quite a while. This article says, staff at the Riverpoint Church hostel in Shepherds Bush never knew they had an imposter in their midst.

An insider said they really took to him and thought he was a great guy. That should have made them think as Morrison is known to be an arrogant sod. End quote. This is the same article, the Yob article. My advice would be to avoid doing anything that might plausibly result in a Scottish newspaper calling you a yab and a sod in the same article. Saad is also bad. This is a suboptimal state of affairs. This is a tough day at Mark Morrison H.Q. The real Mark Morrison eventually gets busted. The judge yells at him probably calls him a yab and a sod again. And Mark does a year in prison. And maybe let's not dwell on this.

The album titles, in the remainder of Mark Morrison's discography, give you some idea of how all this plays out for Mark, career-wise. 1997, an EP called Only God Can Judge Me. 2006, a full-length album called Innocent Man, 2014, an EP called I Am What I Am. Talking to The Guardian in 2006 about both his comeback attempts in his ongoing legal troubles, including a rape allegation for which he was never charged, and which he vehemently denies, he says,

I feel I'm the most realist black artist in England, because I give it to you how it is, whether I'm embarrassed of it, whether I'm ashamed of it, whatever. I got to give that to you to show you where I went wrong and show you that you're not the only one out there. End quote. Here's the song, Innocent Man. DMX is on that song. It's pretty good. So one hit wonder is a rude and not internationally accurate description of this person. But it's true enough that some artists have one huge, glorious, undeniable hit and then get several clean shots at generating another hit that huge and glorious, but just never do. While some other artists have personal lives so chaotic that they never get another clean shot again. And that seems. to be Mark Morrison's deal. Most recently, Mark was toying with the idea of running to be the mayor of Lester, where he grew up.

According to a BBC article from September 2022, he was going to run on a ticket of tackling knife crime and gang violence. But he says he wasn't getting the support he needed from the Leicester City Council or from the community, for that matter. He said, I can no longer shrink myself to fit a place I've outgrown, end quote. there is a good way, but also a bad way, to be too big for your hometown, I suppose. I suppose we're long past the point of Mark Morrison mounting a true comeback, which is too bad. He should go on the mass singer also, actually, lean into it.

He should go on the mass singer and his costume should be the custodian with like a mop and so forth. You get me? Okay, listen, I wouldn't buy a self-help book about marriage from this guy, but I am still rooting for him. him if he ever does anything worth rooting for again. What can I say? He's the Mac, and I want him back, but it don't work like that. Our guest today is Ringer, Senior Staff Writer, an international man of mystery, Justin Charity, co-host of the Sound Only podcast, and he is here today to record his deepest, darkest thoughts about why Return of the Mac is the greatest song of the 1990s, Justin. Welcome.

Thank you for having me here. I can't wait. I've been trading my entire journalism career for this moment. I know you have. That's why you're here. I guess we should start by saying, is Return of the Mac by Mark Morrison, the single greatest song of the 1990s, in your personal opinion? Yes. It's a song I have the most unreasonable passion-borne convictions, though. Okay. Unreasonable. It's reasonable. You can absolutely make that case. You feel it's unreasonable that you love this song so much. I'm a storm of conflicting moderation and excess when it comes to return of the mat. Wow. Okay. Did you love it immediately or has your esteem grown over the years? What is your personal arc with this song?

It's definitely one of those, first of all, like, you know, this song came out. This song is like 1996, right? So it's like, I'm still relatively young when its song comes out, right? And it's very much a club record. So it's not, I'm not in the club. I have. to be honest, I'm not in the club. But it's one of their songs that, yeah, you grow up, right? You grow up. You're kind of like, I think it's that, right? It's like a vintage. It's just a certain vintage. Okay.

You know, that sort of transcontinental US, UK, like that marriage, hip hop, R&B, but with that UK twist, right? I think there's plenty of people who did not know or still don't know that he's English. He's not, it's, in his voice itself, it is not immediately apparent that he's English. Do you, did you get that sense immediately? Did you immediately think of this as an English hip-hop, R&B type song? You know what's funny? It's like, yeah, I get if somebody is just exposed or even overexposed to the single, right?

Return to the Mac. His singing voice is so distinct that, yeah, you can just think he, he's just some sort of alien, right? You don't really peg his accent or anything because it's just such a particular delivery. it's impossible though to listen to that whole album return to the back because then you're just like oh okay yeah this is like this is UK dance music from the late 90s yes okay totally right yeah um in the mid 90s at least some people feared that rap music was infiltrating and permanently altering and maybe even attempting to destroy traditional R&B right like whether she was rapping or not mary j blige was not traditional R&B however you define that like was not a legitimate concern to have

in 1996 and do you hear return of the Mac as rap music subtly hijacking R&B? Well, okay, first of all, like, sure, with the benefit of hindsight, right, 2022, I mean, I've even written right for the Ringer website about how, you know, the post-drake, post-O-O-Ethetic has kind of gotten out of hand and just really crushed entirely that distinction between rap and R&B. I still look back at a lot of those arguments of the 90s, right? of that weird, like, rappers worrying about getting kudies from R&B, and then R&B worrying about kind of like the doctor-draification of things, right? I don't know. I like that. I just like that interplay in the 90s, though.

I think Return on the Mac, Return on the Mac is sort of like what you're saying with Mary Jay, right? It's not like at face value, it's some big rap R&B crossover thing. But once you watch the music video and you sort of get the sense of what Bart Morrison was trying to import sort of culturally and stylistically from the U.S. Yeah, you see that, right? Like, he's very much sort of, he's out Bobby Browning, Bobby Brown. Right.

That's a great way to put it. When you were a complex, you interviewed the guy who directed the video for Return of the Mac. Jay and Jake Nava, I believe. What was it about that video? Like, what exactly was it that Mark Morrison was importing? Was he just taking the G-funk of it all? Like, what impression did you get of him based on that video? It's really that baseline, right?

Like, first of all, that baseline over to join the Mac is immortal. But it's sort of, he has that kind of, you know, I think about this a lot with Tori Lanes. You know how in modern R&B, like, part of the thing with Tori Lanes is that he's kind of clueless. He's kind of, you're just like, this guy, he's an R&B guy. Yeah. He acts in such a sort of, like, dumb rapper kind of way about everything. And I think in a much more elegant sense, right? You watch the return of the Mac video.

And he says, this dude is wearing the full black leather. He has the gold chain with the big M dangling from it. It's like easy to look at that now and be like, oh, that's like a cliched. But this is like a British black dude, you know, in a house club in Westminster. You know, dress like D. You know, dress like run, basically, right? And it's just wild because his swagger in the video, he does kind of have that impervious rapper swagger in the video, like all of his facial expressions, all of his homies in the video,

the absurd stretches where Jake Navas shoots him into triplets, right? Right. For the harmonies. Yeah. It's just, that is some rapper energy for sure that video. I'm trying to remember if it was Jake who said this, but like I see James Bond brought up in a lot.

Yeah, he said he specifically. Right. Okay, it was him. Specifically styled him sort of as like a black James Bond type. Yeah. Like, flex. Okay, I'm glad you brought up the full record. Like, I went into this.

I didn't remember a whole lot about the rest of the record. I was a little trepidious about it. But like, this is a great record. Return of the Mac is a great record overall. Like, there's no, there's no worthy follow up to the song, Return of the Mac on it. But like, it holds together. Like, what do you like about this record?

Like, I enjoy how sort of ridiculous and horny and sort of swaggerful it is. Yeah. Yeah. To me, I mean, you have a bit more of an uneven sort of opinion on that album, right? Sure. Yeah, it is a very odd, largely charming memento of a point in time. Right. What typifies that point of time?

This is 1996. You know, what is it about this specific time period? Is it the R&B influence or the rap influence on R&B? Is it the UK-U-S thing? Like, what is this symbolic of this record? No, I definitely think it's the U.S. to UK thing, right? And it's like, because I remember Jake Navar talks about this a bit in the video. It's sort of like, there's something covered, right, about how stylistically sort of the way,

he's just style in the video is kind of American rapper influenced clearly. But it's like you listen to this whole record and it does feel like it's like late 90s going into 2000s, right? There's that weird quality that all of the interplay

of U.S. R&B, UKRMB, American hip hop and UK hip hop, which they refuse to call hip-hop. They always have to even like 90 different monikers to pretend that it's They just don't in their own laboratory. But, you know, we respect that, I guess, right?

But that interplay always has this kind of, there's always something slightly off about it, right? I think that interplay, like from the 90s onward, has always sounded, like, it produces these uncanny, but like I said, kind of goofy and endearing. Like, even when you get to, like, Craig David, I still hear it, right? There's just something about it. There's like a translate. thing is lost in translation. It's almost like, I don't know,

like translating anime to America or something, right? That's what I think about what I think about. No, please continue along that, that flight of thinking. Yeah, I don't know. It's just like you're listening to facsimile with facts and way. Right, right.

In a lot of ways, that's what it is. I guess I'm trying to get at. I read some specific interview with Mark Morrison where, like, the interviewer says, like, there would be no Craig David without Mark Morrison, but Craig David won't say. Do you agree with that? Do you agree that Mark Morrison was influential on the way the UK would try to do, would try and reinvent hip hop going forward? I do think Craig David is very different, right? Like, Craig David's telling is very different

from, I don't know, go listen to the return of Mac and then go listen to Craig David, right? They're very different, but also 100% that is true. 100% that you need someone like Mark Morrison to kick the door down. You know what I mean? That's what it is. is like all of the energy of him in the video looking absurd, absurd and overconfident. That kicks the door down for somebody more, I think, mellow and actually smooth, like, Greg David. Absolutely. So you mentioned, Return of the Mac is a package deal for me with this is how we do it,

Montel Jordan, right? Like, party anthems built on durable samples. It's rap influence R&B. Like Montel wraps a little more, but it's all about like more like the vibe. for me. Like, it's easily the biggest hit for both of them. Like, are these two songs, this is how we do it in Return of the Mac sort of mirror images in your head.

Okay, here's the thing. It's like, this is how we do it. I think my issue with that song has always been that that groove, I'm always going to associate with Slick Rick. Like to me, in my imagination, it's just Slick Rick trumps Martel Jordan,

right? Yes. Whereas, like, the parallel to that for me is that the groove on Return of the Mac is so it's so squarely the same it's that groove from um how do you want it right the teupac song right uh okay see you know what i mean like it's it's kind of it's kind of no i agree um but but it's and i love both of those songs but to me it's like there's something about return of the mac that is is just i don't know it just sticks to the ribs in a way whereas like i think they both i think okay this is how we do it return of the mac they both have that kind of

they're a little cheesy in retrospect, right? Like they kind of have too much of that nostalgic patina to them and they are a little corny. But I don't know. I think this is how we do it has been. It's just, it's slightly too cheesy in a way that a return to Mac isn't to me. No, I know what you're saying.

I had how do you want it in my head for like the last two weeks like while I've been thinking about like I, I twin that song and Return of the Mac as well. I was going to ask you, like, that's a rap, rapidy rap song, right? That's Tupac rapping, just with Casey and Jojo in the hook. So is that song just a little further along the rap hijacking R&B spectrum?

It absolutely is. It absolutely is. Yeah. For sure. In terms of being a little cheesy now and sort of being symbolic of the 90s, like how much of that is a function of the fact that like neither Montel Jordan or Mark Morrison had like a hit of that caliber again. Like they say about one hit wonders. If these guys had had long careers, other hits like pushing into the early 2000s and beyond, like they wouldn't

be thought of as 90s artists the way that they are because they, you know, they never had the escape velocity of like a second hit. Like what do you think about that idea that we associate them with the 90s because they didn't have a hit beyond, you know, this first hit in the 90s. Yeah. I mean, that's that's a tough counterfact. That's like a would-if Drake's only hit song was fancy. You know, it's like a really hard. I don't want to. Don't give me Drake counterfactuals, man.

I got enough problems. I know what you're saying. Wait, but okay. I don't know that it's possible for me to, I can't scale Mark Morrison out like that. Or not so Jordan, frankly, right? It's just, and I think part of it too, I think part of it too, right?

It's like we were talking about how I interviewed the music video director of Jake Nama, right? which, first of all, Jake Nava, like, I'm talking to this guy. Jake Navajo's worked with Beyonce. You know, Jake Navajo at some point in the video, he's talking about Monster. You know, he's like, you know what I've done like Kanye Monster, Beyonce partition? And I got to respond to him with like, I'll ask the questions here, Jake. Okay, like we're talking about Mark Morrison, buddy.

But then the other part of it, even though you brought up a journalist interview with Mark Morrison, it's like, I tried to interview Mark Morrison and I couldn't find him, right? So in a sense, right? And he's sort of a, he's like Luke Skywalker. The Last Jedi, right? And I think part of it is like, there is like a good mystery there for me of like, yeah, Mark Morrison had this jam. And then he just sort of like disappeared.

He at least wasn't answering my phone calls, you know? And even Jake, Jake even said like, yeah, you know, I like got an email from him after I won, you know, a Grammy for a Beyonce music video. But otherwise, yeah, you know, I don't know where he is. Right. I mean, the short answer is like he was in prison, you know, after for the several years or for at least a year after Return of the Mac. Like, like, Montel Jordan is someone who put out a bunch of records and like tried. But like, I think Mark Morrison has thought of as someone who like sabotaged himself and never really gave himself the chance to follow up return of the Mac.

And he's, you know, he's not having legal trouble anymore, but he's just sort of this ornery monastic figure, you know, who's just not going to give you what you want or not talk. to anybody about the good old days is the read I had on it, I guess. Yeah, I mean, at least as far as we know, maybe he'll hear this episode and he'll reach out to both of us. I kind of hope he doesn't, to be totally honest, but we'll see. So return of the Mac at its core is like a, I bet you're sorry you dumped me, like, comeback, no fuck you sort of song, right? So first of all, did you personally ever use this song as like a comeback like pep talk

cathartic, therapeutic sort of deal. Like, is this song useful in your everyday life in that way? No, I feel like you're asking about it right as a proper breakup song, right? Sure. I mean, it's the text of the song. It's the

text of the music video itself, where he's just like mean mugging this girl for the entire video. I've never really, the song itself doesn't really sound like it doesn't have the right tone for a breakup song. No, you're right.

Which goes back to the thing I was saying about, like, Mark Morrison is kind of impervious in that way, right? He's made this tremendous breakup song that really just sounds like a club, a club pop single, you know? That's the thing. I think that's why when you ask me up top about, is this the greatest song in the 90s? It's like, yeah, it's actually really emotionally portable, right?

Like, I have different ears of my life, right? Different decades of my life, different relationships that. is, the song persists, right? Yeah. That's the power of it, if anything,

is that it's not just the breakup song. I see. I like what you said up top about, like, this is like a club song for people who aren't in the club.

I did, were there other songs from around that time, 96, 95, like that rang that bell for you in particular? I mean, that's the same way

we're trying to, like, not pure R&B, but we're not talking about rap, right? It's just like, this song, this song scratches the itch that no other, I think, non-rap songs scratch for me. Do you personally agree with Martin Morrison that he is like a victim and therefore the hero of this song?

Like you described this song to me as a man calling out a woman on her shit. Like, are you on his side? Is he a sympathetic figure if only for the duration of this song? Yeah, it's weird because the video way he's so styled up to look like. a bad guy. Like the James Bond thing is true, but the way he carries himself is so diabolical. Bond villain. Yeah, he's like, he's acting like a Bond villain, but he's styled like Bond. He's singing about how a woman's scorn him, but he looks kind of like an asshole in every direction with her. He should add to club, like recruiting everybody else into this vendetta

against this woman. He's just trying to go and meet her other boyfriend across that. You know what I mean? It's like, I side with Mark Morrison in the video. Oh, we're in the song or in the video. You know, he's an anti-hero. That's like the best I can say about him. I can't say that I side with him. But there is something, there is a novelty right? I feel like the emotional posture of this video being like, yes, this is going to, you know,

for all the 100 songs of women with beautiful, strong voices singing about how a man did them wrong. Mark Morrison is here to be like, well, hold on now. Not all men. Not today. Oh, God. What is your second favorite Mark Morrison song? It's got to be horny, right? Like, horn just sounds like a persona song, frankly, isn't probably the main.

It's like a Shoggi McGarro type beat. Yeah, I don't know. And that's kind of what I mean. It's like hard to look at the rest of that album. It's kind of all over the place to me, even though it also makes a ton of sense. But I guess it's horny, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good choice, I think.

Is it a huge tragedy for us that he never did follow up return of the Mac? Or is this song stronger for sort of standing on its own? You know, having this mystique, you know, and having this sort of, not tragic, but like, he was never this great again, and that makes this song even greater, that kind of thing. I think that it definitely, I think the song stands on his own. I wish it weren't so, like I understand if you're a musician, it's sort of like music is your passion, like graphic design is mine, right? And you, you want to have, you want to say,

you want to have a career doing this over and over again, making hits, or at least making music that you love, right? And so I can see how for a lot of artists, becoming pegged as a one-hit wonder is hurtful, right? But also you kind of wish more artists could sort of like lean into it and be proud of it and be like, yeah, I made this song that had the kind of impact that's just exceptionally hard to have on human culture. Right. And especially because like when you when you hear sort of like, I don't know, I remember Jake was telling me about when he first ran into Mark Morrison in the club when he had sort of written the treatment for Return on the Mac video. He ran in him in the club.

He was just like, yeah, you know, this guy. He was surrounded by some tough dudes. He was serious. He was like, yeah, he put it in a euphemism charm. He was like, let's just say, like, he was, you know. And to me, he's like, he had other stuff going on in his life, you know, and that I think explains what you were saying about spending time, incarcerated and whatnot, right?

But yeah. Yeah, you sort of want to think that like Mark Morrison is the kind of guy who could lead an even fuller life that you know you want him to be the kind of guy where like oh yeah I made this song that you know

Justin Charity is talking about on a podcast 26 years later and that's just one of many things right I also became like an excellent fisherman right like that's kind of you want Mark Morrison to age in the back

for example yes he was going to run for mayor of his hometown in Leicester England I don't think he is anymore but that's I don't know about the fishing thing. I'm going to have to look into that. I have no evidence of him

being a fisherman of any ability, but maybe that's true. I don't know. Anything is possible. He's a multi-talented guy. Mark Morrison. You sent me this G. Easy song. That was not very nice. It was not nice. I'm sorry. It's not the nicest thing you ever did.

It is called Provide. It is from 2021. It also has Chris Brown on it. That's not pleasant. Is this song that also features Mark Morrison? Is this an entirely cursed entity or is there some value or insight we can extract from the soul to provide? I hope my intentions were clear. I did not bring that song to you like a cat, you know, giving you a dead bird.

Like I brought it to you understanding that it would distress you. But I thought it was one of those things where it's like, all evidence is evidence, right? Like I had to bring it. Yeah, yeah. No, I know. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the G. Easy part is more unpleasant than the Chris Brown. You know what I mean? It's sort of like the moment G.E.Z, I don't want to say the moment he starts verbalizing in any fashion whatsoever on that song, you're just like, yeah, of course, this is what he did with this. Like, of course he just sort of like flops all over this song, like a magic heart and just waste it. Yes.

Do you have a sense of how much younger people than us? perceive return of the Mac. I always wonder when I do this show, like, what songs that I'm talking about does, like, a 16-year-old conceivably care about versus, like, this is just a relic from the distance past? Is this

a song that can speak to the actual youth of 2022? I guess is what I'm asking. I'm going to say what I say whenever Micah asked me this on sound only, whenever Charles asked me this on a music show, whenever you ask me this here, I'm going to say what I always say, which is that, look,

zoomers don't have any culture of their own, right? They just, zoomers are just, their culture is millennial culture because zoomers are real. So I'm going to go ahead and assume, I'm going to go ahead and assume that zoomers and younger love as far as the Mac as much as I do

because they listen into like fake Avril Levine. Yeah, I mean, it's like, of course they like to turn their Mac, they like everything else that I like. Right. They like the Simpsons too, bro. they're watching friends just like we did yeah right yeah okay i walked right into that one i walked right into that one i guess eight bush like what did they have all right i'm not going to

do any better than that unfortunately justin this has been wonderful and insightful as always thank you so much for talking thanks for having thanks very much to our guest this week justin charity thanks as always to our producers Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales and thanks to you for listening. And now I encourage you to go listen to the Mark Morrison classic Return of the Mac. We'll see you next week.