Technotronic

by Jason Ankeny
 
Of the many studio-based dance music projects which dominated the charts during the early 90s, few were so popular, or such an improbable success story, as Technotronic. Emerging from Belgium — never a musical hotbed in the first place — the multicultural group helped push the deep bass grooves and insistent beats of house music out of the club scene and into the pop mainstream; ironically, they did so largely by hiding behind the photogenic visage of an African-born fashion model who, it was later revealed, did not even perform on their records. In reality, Technotronic was the brainchild of Jo Bogaert (real name Thomas de Quincy), an American-born philosophy teacher who relocated to Belgium in the late 80s in the hopes of mounting a career as a record producer. Bogaerts intent was to fuse house with hip hop, and towards that aim he sent demos of his work to a variety of rappers, including the Welsh-born MC Eric and a Zairean-born teenager named Ya Kid K (nee Manuela Kamosi), at the time a member of the Belgian rap group Fresh Beat Productions.
 
Technotronics first single, 1989s Pump Up the Jam, was a smash hit across Europe and eventually the U.S. While the record featured the raps of Ya Kid K, she was nowhere to be seen in the accompanying video, which instead featured Zairean-born fashion model Felly lip-synching the lyrics; little did fans realize that not only was Felly nowhere near the studio at the time the single was recorded, in truth she did not even speak a word of English. She was also featured on the cover of Technotronics debut LP, Pump Up the Jam: The Album, further blurring the lines between truth and fiction; in the end, Bogaert admitted that Fellys services had been engaged purely to establish the group with an image. When Technotronic toured in support of the 1990 hit Get Up! (Before the Night Is Over), Ya Kid K and MC Eric were alone behind the microphone, and Ya Kid K was also rightfully featured in the songs video. The LP Trip On This: The Remixes soon followed, and in 1992 Ya Kid K went solo, albeit with Bogaert still in the producers seat; her debut album, One World Nation, scored with the hit Move This, originally a Technotronic cut released as a single after finding success in a cosmetics commercial. The 1995 Technotronic comeback attempt Recall was not a success.