Here I was, this whole time thinking that I needed to get this Marley Marl remix of the ode to Dapper Dan’s favourite pugilist, when the real knock-out was Teddy Riley’s dub work on the flip. Ted was in the midst of his proto-New Jack Swing era, delivering dancefloor-ready rap jams for Moe Dee, the Hevster and the Classical Two. ‘I’m All Shook Up’ helped give Spoonie a nice second wind, but even relegated to the b-side, this dub mix steps-up the stutter and rides the chunky bass chords all the way to the bank. The added horn on the hook suggests that maybe this was intended as the remix for the vocal version, but there was a mix-up when the tapes were handed in and the album mix was used instead. Or perhaps Ted knew that the art of the dub mix was where the real action was a lot of the time – especially in the era of endless drum machine reverb.
