I will never look at one female rapper the same.
I try hard to shy away from modern Internet hyperbole (“15 Facts About South Korea’s Industrial Manufacturing Systems That Will Blow Your Mind!”) but every once in a while, something worthy comes along.
To me, this trivia fact IS that rare, worthy unicorn.
On December 1, 1992, a single came out called I Got a Man from a heretofore unknown rapper named Positive K.
The song was extremely catchy (it used samples from several songs, most notably a 1980 disco song called Rescue Me) and told a story. A guy is trying to pick up a woman, who thoroughly rebuffs him by letting him know she already has a man. Even as the guy rattles off his myriad accomplishments, the woman is always instantly ready to one-up him with a retort about her man’s superiority.
The song was a huge hit. It peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1993 and was 63rd on the year-end chart. Positive K a pure one-hit wonder, as he never cracked the top 40 (or even top 100) again.
I loved the song when it came out (I’m almost positive a cassette single of I Got a Man is still somewhere at my parents’ house) and have continued to love it through the decades since. I even karaoked it a few years ago with a friend and, obviously, she and I killed it.
But there was one question I never thought to ask.
Who’s doing the female rap part?
Yesterday, I was messing around on Reddit’s Today I Learned and happened upon a post that wasn’t receiving very many upvotes — but upvoted MY brain like no post on Reddit ever had before.
“[Today I Learned] that Positive K did both the male and female vocals on I Got a Man.”
If I may channel Buzzfeed for a second here…
It’s true. The woman rapping with Positive K on I Got a Man is… Positive K. Apparently he messed with the pitch of his voice in post-production to completely alter his own voice.
I don’t know if he had to slow down the track and rap extra slow so he could “Alvin and the Chipmunks” himself into a higher pitch or if that wasn’t necessary with 1992’s technology. I don’t know how he managed to make the back-and-forths of the song so perfectly tight and timed as he argued with himself. I don’t know how this piece of musical wizardry escaped the trivia fishing dredge of my mindhole until today, more than 22 years later.
But I love it. This is now my favorite piece of music trivia ever. It’s better than finding out the subject of Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know. It’s better than Al Green making more royalties off Big Mouth Billy Bass’s cover of Take Me to the River than he made from the real version of the song. It’s better than Miley Cyrus admitting she’d never heard a Jay-Z song before Party in the U.S.A.
When it comes to great music trivia, Positive K, you ARE the man. I’m finally trying to hear that, see.