Biography All Music Guide Wikipedia
Group Members: Rude Boy
All Music Guide:
The Amsterdam-based rock/rap collective Urban Dance Squad began in 1986, playing and jamming together on an informal basis. They played a gig at the Utrecht Festival and, surprised by the raves their performance drew, became a more serious project. The group gigged for two years, and with the proceeds released 1990's Mental Floss for the Globe. Urban Dance Squad's mix of rock, rap, funk, ska, folk, hip-hop, and soul signaled the trend toward genre-bending that prevailed in '90s music. Mental Floss featured the single "Deeper Shade of Soul" which charted at number 21 in the U.S. on Billboard's Hot 100.
The group spent another year touring constantly, and released their second album Life 'n Perspective of a Genuine Crossover in 1991. Unfortunately, it failed to match Mental Floss' critical or commercial success, as did 1994's Persona Non Grata. 1999 saw Urban Dance Squad release their fourth album, Planet Ultra, as well as re-release their earlier releases on the Triple X label.
Wikipedia:
Urban Dance Squad was a Dutch rap rock band formed after what was originally intended as a one-time jam-session at a festival in Utrecht on December 20, 1986. The band consisted of a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, a rapper and a DJ. Their music is described as a blend of genres, including funk, soul, heavy metal, hip hop, reggae, jazz and ska and is often compared to that of Rage Against the Machine, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone. Urban Dance Squad were one of the most successful Dutch bands of the nineties, releasing five studio albums.
Career
Urban Dance Squad first got together in 1986, at a jam session in De Vrije Vloer, a club in Utrecht, a jam which resulted in the first Dutch rock band with a rapper (they borrowed the name from Parliament-Funkadelic's Urban Dancefloor Guerillas); a song, "Struggle for Jive"; and the blending of white and black music in the Netherlands, at the same time that Fishbone, Living Colour, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were doing the same in the United States. The band recorded its first album, Mental Floss for the Globe, in Brussels in 1989 (produced by Jean-Marie Aerts, of TC Matic), and came to instant success. It won an Edison Award, and the single "Deeper Shade of Soul" was a hit in Europe and even in the United States, where it charted at number 21 in the United States on Billboard Hot 100. Two more singles were released from the album, and Urban Dance Squad toured the US in 1991, opening up for Living Colour--The Pittsburgh Press described their music as "refried Zeppelin riffs and neo-Hendrix guitar solos complete with sound effects and old soul records to produce an exceedingly loud, densely packed, dissonant garage-rock stew."
In the middle of the band's career, to capitalize on the success of grunge and alternative rock, Urban Dance Squad released Persona Non Grata in January 1994. All of the tracks feature heavy use of distortion and guitar. In particular, the singles "No Honestly" and "Candy Strip Exp." were released. The latter single features a radio edit that cuts most of the pre-song noise.
Artantica saw release in 1999, and was a return to the band's hip-hop roots, and received critical acclaim. Urban Dance Squad disbanded the following year, though they did perform together again as late as 2006.
