There's something alarmingly adult about the Ribeiro oeuvre, and "Dance Baby" is no exception. There I was, thinking that Alfonso Ribeiro was just Carlton Banks, just Will Smith's muscled comedic foil, just another product of the nostalgia machine, and the whole time I'd known him, which was, essentially, my entire conscious life, he'd made this! It was like finding out your weird great uncle had a Nobel stuffed down the sofa. As someone who's life was changed in 2005 after hearing Chromeo's Un Joli Mix Pour Toi for the first time, falling head over heels for the chewy, elasticated, yearning, sexiness of the post-disco, post-funk music known as boogie, hearing "Dance Baby" for the first time was an almost religious moment of transcendental ecstasy.
"Dance Baby" is a genuinely perfect record, in every way, and a song I don't think I could ever tire of. Following its broadcast run, rumours abounded that claimed that Ribeiro-who undoubtedly outshines the King of Pop and really, really makes you want to go out and guzzle down the taste of the thrill of the day-had died as the result of breakdancing-induced neck-break during the filming. Ribeiro plays an MJ Mini Me, moonwalking with gay abandon, while the full-sized Mike sings a fizzy-drink friendly version of "Billie Jean," a song so good, so resolutely not-of-this-world that even changing the lyrics of the chorus to, "You're the Pepsi generation/guzzle down and taste the thrill of the day," has no majorly adverse consequences. In that advert, Jackson is surrounded by a gang of pre-pubescent breakdancing lads who gamely chuff down bottles of the sickly sweet carbonated drink. He then appeared in a Pepsi advert alongside Michael Jackson. When he was eight he was smashing Broadway as the leading man in The Tap Dance Kid. When I was eight, I had a crippling, life-ruining fear of rain and a propensity to lie on the floor of my mum's car on family days out. Ribeiro rose to fame at the age of eight. But Alfonso Ribeiro wasn't just any sadsack who didn't play 90s kid icon Carlton Banks.
Before he was 90s kid icon Carlton Banks, Alfonso Ribeiro was just plain old Alfonso Ribeiro.
0 kommentar(er)
