13 August 1992
There’s no denying that it’s a rotten lyric, the kind of ostentatious crassness you’d sooner expect from a teenage boy or a privileged, entitled, middle-aged ‘edgy’ male comedian. But if you ask people what they remember about ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’, they’ll probably say “I’m as serious as cancer / when I say rhythm is a dancer” – if they remember it at all, of course.
Harsh? No. The track as a whole has the same sort of dumb bluntness. Not that ’90s Dutch and German Eurodance was ever noted for its subtlety or shades of meaning, but ‘No Limit’ by 2 Unlimited had, if not quite a sense of humour, at least a sense of fun. ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’, though, is no fun at all: an aggressively joyless techno-rap cut-and-shut. There are likeable elements to this. Each time the spiralling synth hook (built on a sample from ‘Automan’ by ’80s US electro-funk group Newcleus) and Thea Austin’s soul vocals come around for the chorus they lift the track. Then Turbo D’s dour, clumsy rapping sinks it again like a lead weight, complete with that cancer clunker. Do you know what else rhymes with ‘dancer’? Chancer.
