"The Bomb! " is a house music track by The Bucketheads, released in 1995. "The Bomb!" was later dubbed into the project's sole album All in the Mind. It was a commercial hit in the UK in winter/spring 1995, reaching No. 5 on the singles chart, while it peaked in the US at No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Background and release
Produced by Masters at Work member Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez, and featuring samples from Chicago's "Street Player" from their 1979 album Chicago 13, the subtitle of the song is a mondegreen; the actual lyrics taken from the sample are "Street sounds swirling through my mind..." Also sampled is "The Preacher Man" by Green Velvet,. The accompanying video was featured on the Beavis and Butt-head episode "Prank Call," on January 28, 1996. The track once served as the entrance music for former World bantamweight and featherweight boxing champion Prince Naseem Hamed, and is featured on the soundtrack for the 2010 film The Switch.
Critical reception
editor John Bush wrote that the song is a "great-sounding fusion of disco-funk and house that works well" on his review of the All in the Mind album. John Hamilton from Idolator called it a "eccentric" dance track. John Kilgo from The Network Forty noted it as "a perfect "roll down your windows and crank up the sound" tune". Charles Aaron from Spin said that the song as "more than a Box novelty, "The Bomb!" is essential '90s funk, a house party on the last car of the D to the A train winding its way from Brooklyn up to Manhattan's disco meat-packing district with conductor Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez mixing electro, hip-hop, house, and Chicago."
Music video
The music video for "The Bomb!" was directed by Guy Ritchie and Alex De Rakoff on a budget of roughly £1,000, being one of their first music video recordings shot on a Super 8 film camera, inspired by some of the Beastie Boys' music video recording styles. It was filmed in London, as can be depicted from the side of the road being driven on with the car's steering wheel on the right side of the car and double-decker buses, and first aired in March 1995. The music video starts off with a Black man with an afro waking up because of an alarm clock alongside two blonde haired White women with wavy hair and the other with straight hair, the latter of which gets her hair done into pigtails. After they all get themselves ready to go out to have fun, they walk out of the home and the blonde with pigtails is seen driving through London in a Volkswagen Superbug, which the man with an afro later drives while nodding to the blonde with pigtails, who quickly turns away. The gang are seen walking together through a market area and later go into a record shop where the man with an afro finds a record within the store's inventory of this exact song. They all later leave the record store, walk more through the market area, then the man with an afro departures from the two blondes via a kiss on their cheeks, later entering a nightclub called Carwash.
Impact and legacy
Mixmag ranked the song number 60 in its 100 Greatest Dance Singles Of All Time list in 1996, adding,
"A quarter of an hour's worth of mirrorball mayhem, Kenny 'Dope' Gonzales' The Bomb is the ultimate disco cutup track. Shatteringly simple, the genius of The Bomb lies in the way it builds up your anticipation with a protracted burst of hard jacking drums and atonal honking before the perfect disco sample soars away into the distance. A massive hit when Positiva licensed it in early 1995, The Bomb kick-started the trend for raiding old disco 12s. Dozens of producers followed its lead, but none of them ever equalled the definitive original article."
DJ Magazine ranked it number 95 in their list of Top 100 Club Tunes in 1998. Slant Magazine ranked the song 65th in its 100 Greatest Dance Songs list in 2006. The Guardian featured the song on their A history of modern music: Dance in 2011. MTV Dance placed "The Bomb!" at #10 in their list of The 100 Biggest 90's Dance Anthems Of All Time in November 2011. Idolator ranked the song number 34 in their ranking of The 50 Best Pop Singles of 1995 in 2015. John Hamilton commented,
"Who would have predicted that The Karate Kid, Part II balladeer and former lead singer of Chicago, Peter Cetera, would experience a mid-’90s career renaissance as a house music diva? But that’s exactly what happened when noted remixer/producer Kenny "Dope" Gonzales lifted a vintage slice of Chicago’s "Street Player", dressed it with a funky kick, edited the hell out of the horn section and Cetera’s vocals and turned it all out as "The Bomb!""
BuzzFeed listed the song number 44 in their The 101 Greatest Dance Songs Of the '90s list in 2017. Mixmag ranked the song as one of The 20 best US rave anthems of the '90s in 2019, adding,
"The Bucketheads is a disco-sampling solo project from NYC dance music legend Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez who is also revered for his work as one half of Masters At Work alongside Louie Vega. Sampling the band Chicago's 1979 track 'Street Player', Kenny Dope created a slick piece of house that forces hands in the air everywhere."
Slant Magazine placed the song at number 48 in their list of The 100 Best Dance Songs of All Time in 2020.
