1990 Partners In Kryme: Turtle Power

By the time 1990 rolled around I was at an age by which I was meant to have put away childish things. I hadn't (and still haven't), but mass marketed, martial arts turtles wasn't something that generated any fondness on my part and the whole craze barely flickered my interest levels (save for an in-built pretension of feeling awfully smug that I could point out that, of the four, Donatello was named after a sculptor and not a painter).

'Turtle Power' deserves kudos from the off for being the first genuine black artist rap single to get to number one. Yes there had been hints and traces of its influence previously, but this was the real deal. That it got there on the back of the hokum of a kids craze is no reason to sell it short either; in fact, I think it rather works in its favour. Rap in 1990 was still relatively off the UK's mainstream radar and carried a generation gap widening, parental disapproving hint of danger and rebellion; when, in 1991, James Cameron wanted to symbolise the pissy attitude and anti-authoritarianism of John Connor in 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day', he simply had him wear a Public Enemy T shirt. Job done. And so in being marketed directly to pre-teen schoolkids, 'Turtle Power' acted as a priming, 'My First Rap Record' introduction to a parent worrying genre in a way that the spin offs of 'The Wombling Song' and 'The Smurf Song' that the pre-teen schoolboy me owned did not.

Not that Partners In Kryme were Public Enemy or anything approaching, but the very medium of the message toughens it with a 'me against the world' attitude that any aspiring rebel without a cause could empathise with. "Since you were born you been willing and able to defeat the sneak, protect the weak, fight for rights and your freedom to speak" - there's positivity there, and though 'Turtle Power' may be flimsily generic compared to the best of the genre, I'm happy to thumb my nose at the purists (and my own good 1990 self) and acknowledge that it was never aimed at the gangstas or black power militants who had hijacked rap for their own ends but at young TMNT fans keen to buy into the macho, psuedo violence of their heroes as they rescue the girl and get the baddie. To that end it also ticks the box marked 'job done', and if any of its young fans went on to listen to the similarly martial arts inspired Wu Tang Clan then so much the better.