Love City Groove
UK Eurovision 1995 entrants with a rap-pop sound.
Love City Groove were a musical group who represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 1995. Their self-titled song finished tenth with 76 points and peaked at No. 7 on the UK Singles Chart. The entry was chosen by a public vote.
Quick Facts
- Origin
- London, England
- Genre
- Pop
- R&B
- hip hop
- Years active
- 1994–96
- Label
- Sony Music, Planet 3
- Past members
- Paul Hardy
- Stephen "Beanz" Rudden
- Jay Williams
- Yinka Charles (aka MC Reason)
Facts from the source article.
The band
Love City Groove came together when Stephen "Beanz" Rudden, a producer and songwriter working at Warner Chappell Music, asked fellow Warner Chappell writer Tatiana Mais (known as Q-Tee) to rap on a track he had written called "Sentence of Love." Q-Tee thought the song needed a male rapper too, so she brought in Jay Williams, a student at the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology. Record producer Dave Ambrose, who had signed Duran Duran and Pet Shop Boys, had asked Rudden to create a "summer anthem" for 1994. Rudden combined the rappers' two songs with a third piece, and Paul Hardy came up with the chorus line "In the morning, when the sun shines." Hardy later explained that because the track was about love and had an urban feel, they used "city," and he suggested "groove," which gave the group its name. In February 1994, Rudden mixed the rap parts with Hardy's new chorus vocals and took the result to Ambrose at Planet 3 Records, planning a release later that year. However, Jonathan King, who was working for BBC Television and looking for a Eurovision entry, asked for the song to be submitted to the "A Song for Europe" contest in 1995. The final lineup included Rudden, rappers Jay Williams and Yinka Charles (also known as "Reason"), and Paul Hardy. The contest selectors wanted something different from past British Eurovision entries, aiming to reflect what was actually popular in the charts. The band members came from varied backgrounds: Hardy's father was from Cyprus, Williams is of Hispanic heritage, and Reason is of Trinidadian and Irish descent. Their Eurovision song, also called "Love City Groove" and written by Rudden, Hardy, Williams, and Tatiana Mais, was chosen by public vote. It featured laid-back soulful instrumentals with rap vocals from Williams and Reason, backed by a full orchestra. This was a clear departure from earlier UK entries, which had all been ballads and pop tunes. Hardy believed the orchestra was a poor fit for the song and felt it ruined the track.
Solo careers
In the mid-1980s, Rudden was involved with local acts like Smell Funky Beast and did programming work behind the scenes for the British synth-pop dance band Kissing the Pink. He then moved on to a solo instrumental project called Plutonic, which released a version of Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" on CBS Records in 1989. That success got him a contract with CBS Records in London and a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music. He turned Plutonic into the first of several group projects he would lead, putting out "Twilight Zone" on Sony in 1991 and an album for Arista Records in 1992. That album included the singles "One Life," remixed by Frankie Knuckles and Mike "Hitman" Wilson, and "Sentence of Love," which had a remix by Eric Kuppa. Following Love City Groove, Rudden formed a new band called The Collective, which signed to Simon Cowell's label. They submitted a song for the 1998 Eurovision pre-selection but didn't make the cut. He wrote a track for Shirley Kwan titled "About Me," which hit number one in Southeast Asia and stayed there for six weeks. He also composed the title theme "Get Crafty" for the film The Real Howard Spitz, starring Kelsey Grammer, and created music for Disney's game Astro Knights. In 2007, he released his follow-up instrumental album, Blog, on iTunes. In 2011, Rudden thought about putting out "Love City Groove" again and got back in touch with Paul Hardy. They recorded a new single, but this time the rap verses were swapped out and sung by Moxiie. It came out in August 2011 on Strawberry Hill records, and they shot a music video for it in Trafalgar Square. Yinka Inniss Charles, who performs as MC Reason, was born in 1970. Her father, Elton Anthony Carlisle Inniss, was one of the black activists known as the Mangrove Nine. He moved from Trinidad to the UK as a teenager, and her mother is Irish, from Cork. Yinka grew up in Notting Hill. Her first name is Nigerian, chosen because of the African culture her father embraced. Her parents split up, and her father went back to Trinidad for good. He was a musician, which inspired her to become one too. She visited him in Trinidad a few times before he died in 2010. She started rapping in an old-school hip hop style at age 15 and found a lot of success, performing at concerts and on music channels and shows worldwide, including YO MTV and Top of the Pops.
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