Get Ready!

Phil Wilde and Jean-Paul De Coster had already had a hit project, AB Logic, when they went looking for another act. Marvin D., who had featured both of the future singers in his own rap group, introduced Ray Slijngaard and Anita Doth. Get Ready for This began in May 1991 as an instrumental they called the Orchestral Mix, a white label for clubs. 2 Unlimited did not yet have a face. At a meeting in a record shop, Wilde played Slijngaard the instrumental. Slijngaard said he could write a rap for it. Two weeks later a demo arrived at his father’s house. He wrote the verses and a chorus for a woman to sing, in two hours, and it was the first song he had written. The producers agreed to the sung part. They recorded the vocal version in a small studio behind Amsterdam Centraal. Byte Records in Belgium released the single on 23 September 1991.

Britain heard a different edit. Pete Waterman, whose PWL Continental licensed the act, put out a version of the instrumental that keeps a single line, “Y’all ready for this?”, sampled from the D.O.C.’s It’s Funky Enough. That edit reached number 2. Australia did the same. The rap version was the one the producers asked for once the clubs had bitten. The near-instrumental was the one that stayed in circulation, because a hall can shout one line and does not need a verse.

The album, Get Ready!, followed on 24 February 1992, on Byte, and on licence through PWL in Britain and ZYX in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Twilight Zone had already topped the Dutch chart in January and reached number 2 in Britain. The album holds those singles, newer tracks, and two ballads. The ballads are the part a stadium edit throws away. Doth can sing when the kick steps back. Slijngaard’s rap is a person who wrote the words in an afternoon, not a sample of a crowd. Eurodance later got drawn as a stab and a shout. This debut still has authors, and the authors started with an instrumental because that is what a Belgian club would play on a white label.

The album chart was quieter than the singles, which is the honest proportion. The Netherlands put it at number 12, Australia at number 10, Britain at number 37. The United States certified the album gold in 1995, long after those clubs had moved on, and the hook had become a noise American sports play without naming Antwerp. On the way there the single spent years on Billboard’s dance and pop charts, from 1992 into 1995: number 14 on Dance Club Play, number 17 on Top 40 Mainstream, number 38 on the Hot 100. That Hot 100 peak is the group’s only American top 40. BMI gave the song one of its Pop Awards in 1996. Wikipedia notes that Pitchfork, in 2010, filed the single on a list of 1990s jock jams. The list is a joke and a plot at the same time. A white label cut for a dancefloor in Belgium ended as the sound of a stadium that does not know it is playing a club record. Britain met the near-instrumental on Top of the Pops once it hit number 2. It got there in its fourth week, on 20 October 1991, and stayed a second week. The Eurochart Hot 100 put the single at number 4. Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain all gave it a top 10. In February 2024 Billboard ranked the song tenth on a list of the 100 greatest jock jams, and wrote that it had cast a greater shadow over 1990s sports culture than anything besides Shaquille O’Neal. It was the unofficial theme of the San Antonio Spurs until the 2006–07 season. The white label did not stay in 1991. Yves Deruyter remixed it for a Belgian 12-inch in May 2001. Robbie Rivera followed that August. Steve Aoki’s version came out on Byte in 2013. If you want the thing Wilde and De Coster actually made, you want the instrumental, and then you want Doth.

Sources

• Get Ready for This: instrumental in May 1991, Byte single on 23 September 1991, Slijngaard and Doth, the PWL edit, the D.O.C. sample, the chart peaks.
• Get Ready!: album released 24 February 1992 on Byte, PWL Continental and ZYX, and the album-chart peaks.
• 2 Unlimited: Wilde and De Coster in Antwerp, Slijngaard and Doth from 1991.