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Return of the Mack
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Date Aired
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March 2, 2021
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Running Time
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18:21
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Previous Review
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Website
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Todd plays "Return of the Mack" on the piano.
MARK MORRISON - RETURN OF THE MACK
A one-hit wonder retrospective
Todd: Welcome back to One Hit Wonderland, where we take a look at bands and artists known for only one song. Folks, one of the more annoying things that has afflicted the show in recent years is...
Clips of Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus - "Old Town Road" and Daddy Yankee featuring Snow - "Con Calma"
Todd (VO): ...new acts taking one-hit wonders out of mothballs and getting them back on the charts. Both Billy Ray Cyrus and Snow showed up as guest stars on hit songs long after I did episodes on them. [brief clips of "Achy Breaky Heart"...] I thought 20 years should be long enough to say [...and "Informer"] they're not gonna have a second hit, but apparently not!
Todd: And last week, lo and behold, [shot of "Provide" at #64 on Billboard Hot 100] what did I see on the charts? [Mark Morrison's name underlined in red] Of course.
Clip of G-Eazy ft Chris Brown & Mark Morrison - "Provide"
G-Eazy: ...you mad, slappin' "Lemonade" in the Porsche
Relax, baby
Chris Brown: Ooh, just vibe with me
Todd (VO): That song immediately disappeared because it is actual shit, and Mr. Morrison only has some background vocals, so I wouldn't really count it anyway. But I still got kind of worried that I'm running out of time to do an episode while this guy is still a one-hit wonder.
Todd: So, we are gonna solve that right now.
Video for Mark Morrison - "Return of the Mack"
Todd (VO): What is the R&B jam of the mid-90s? Is it [clips of...] "This Is How We Do It"? "No Diggity"? "Pony"? Those are all in the conversation certainly...
Todd: …but...
Todd (VO): …there's also one song that just refuses to go away. That continues to own the world...
Todd: …almost 25 years later.
Mark Morrison: (Return of the mack) It is
(Return of the mack) Come on
Todd: Yeeeessss.
Todd (VO): In the summer of 1997, Mark Morrison hit #2 on the Hot 100 with what is basically the greatest bounce-back anthem of all time. And once it returned, the mack never left.
Todd: It wasn't necessarily the biggest hit in '97, not in the year of [brief clips of Spice Girls - "Who Do You Think You Are"...] Spice, [..."MMMBop" by...] Hanson and the […and "Hypnotize" and "Mo Money Mo Problems" by The Notorious B.I.G.] utter dominance of Bad Boy Records. But in hindsight [back to "Return of the Mack"] it may be the most beloved. Everyone has adopted "Return of the Mack" as their jam.
Clips of Master of None...
Dev Shah (Aziz Ansari): [while "Return of the Mack plays in the background] Well, this is maybe the most amazing song that's ever been created.
…Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Ray Dalton - "Can't Hold Us"...
Macklemore: Return of the Mack
…French Montana - "Return of the Mack"...
French: Return of the Mack
…Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick interview for Trolls…
Justin: [doing Mark Morrison impression] Well I guess you didn't know
...Mann ft. Snoop Dogg and Iyaz - "The Mack"...
Iyaz: ...champagne let's make a toast...
Snoop Dogg: La da da da
...and New Girl
Jessica (Zooey Deschanel): Return of High Jess, return of High Jess
Cece (Hannah Simone): Once again
Todd (VO): Yes, everyone, even and especially corny white people,...
Todd: ...loves "Return of the Mack".
Clip of Top of the Pops performance of "Return of the Mack"
Todd (VO): And you can credit that to the unbeatable swagger of [zoomed in shot of Return of the Mack album cover] one Mr. Mark Morrison.
Todd: Do you know he's British?
Clip of interview
Mark: I'm gonna come back, and I'm gonna come back stronger than I ever did before.
Todd (VO): He is! [clip of "Return of the Mack"] In fact, according to his own artist biography, he is the [shot of Allmusic bio, quoting...] most successful British R&B act of the mid-90s. Which is a sentence with a hell of a lot of qualifiers on it.
Todd: And even then I'm not sure that's actually true.
Clip of Seal - "Kiss from a Rose"
Seal: Baby, and I compare you to a kiss from a rose
Todd: Ha ha. But, then again...
Clip of Top of the Pops performance and "Return of the Mack" video
Todd (VO): …maybe he was even bigger than Seal in the mid-90s. For a while, Mark Morrison was primed to be a big goddamn deal. The man who proved that the Brits could be as fresh and fly as anyone over here. And it just didn't happen.
Todd: The man may have started his career with a comeback...
Todd (VO): ...but the mack never re-returned to these shores.
Mark: And I'm back to rock the show
He should have. He had everything he needed to be a star.
Todd: What happened to the mack?
Todd (VO): Where did you go, Mark?
Todd: Where are you?
Mark: Here I am
Return of the mack
Before the hit
Clip of Ice-T interview with Mark Morrison on Baadasss TV
Andrea Oliver: ...and our guest tonight is the Mack Daddy of them all, Mark Morrison.
Todd (VO): Mark Morrison comes to us from [image of welcome sign for...] Leicester, England. The famed home of [images of...] Jamie Vardy, Stilton cheese, the remains of Richard III...
Todd: ...and not a whole lot of good music, unless you're a big fan of [album cover for the Greatest Hits of...] Engelbert Humperdinck. In fact, England itself is not really known for R&B in general.
Video for Sade - "Sweetest Taboo"
Todd (VO): The Brits have made plenty of good soul music, but [clip of Gabrielle - "Dreams"] it tends to be very...
Todd: ...tasteful.
Clip of Des'ree - "You Gotta Be"
Des'ree: You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser
Todd: The funkier R&B...
Video for Bell Biv DeVoe - "Poison"
Todd (VO): ...especially starting in the '90s, when it started mixing with rap music [clip of Mary J. Blige - "Real Love"] like new jack swing and everything that came after it, the Brits tended not to make that...
Todd: ...because they have been historically terrible at rapping.
Clip of... Liverpool FC - Anfield Rap
Todd (VO): Ha! They've caught up since, but...
Todd: ...at the time, I kinda sensed that neither the U.S. nor the U.K. thought the U.K. should touch anything related to rap.
Video for Vanilla Ice - "Ice Ice Baby"
Todd (VO): Like, there's always this suspicion when people who aren't black try to connect to this African-American art form.
Todd: Apparently, this also applies if you're not American. [image of front cover for Hip-Hop Connection magazine] Black or not, you're still a [image of Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air] floofy European, right?
Clip of Mark Morrison live performance
Todd (VO): Mark Morrison set out to change those preconceptions. He was gonna be the first new jack swing star of the U.K.
Female Host: First British swing beat star, Mark Morrison.
I guess the Brits call it swing beat? Whatever. And maybe he was the guy that pulled it off because he had enough experience outside of sad, rainy England. Though raised in Leicester, he was actually born in West Germany. His parents were from Barbados, and according to his Wiki bio, he lived in Miami for a while.
Todd: He was very inspired by American artists.
Montage clips of "My Prerogative" and "I Get Around" by, respectively...
Todd (VO): He wanted to be the UK's Bobby Brown or Tupac Shakur.
Todd: And boy, did he succeed. But we'll get to that.
Video for...
Todd (VO): This is his first single from 1995, "Crazy".
Mark: Everybody crazy frontin' on me
"Crazy" is also the name of a [clip of...] Seal song, but...you wouldn't mistake Mark Morrison for Seal.
Clip of Mark Morrison - "Crazy"
Mark: Ever since
I went Number One
Todd (VO): Morrison immediately set out to be the bad boy of British music. He dressed like a pimp. He'd been in prison, 'cause he'd been in a wild bar brawl where...
Todd: ...someone died.
Mark: People saying Mark ain't right no
Another clip of Ice-T interview
Todd (VO): He wore handcuffs on one wrist all the time, so he definitely wasn't hiding it. The United Kingdom had never seen anyone like this.
Todd: This was the state of British R&B.
Clips of Peter Andre - "Flava"...
Peter Andre: If you're down throw ya hands up in the air
The mac's back wid da' flava of the year
Here we go there's a party over here
... and The Braids - "Bohemian Rhapsody"
Zöe Ellis: Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Todd (VO): Mmm-hmm, yeah. [clip of Mark Morrison live performance] So, an actual, credible home-grown R&B/hip-hop artist, that was a pretty big deal. The British kids loved music like this, but they never had one of their own get big with it. "Crazy" put him on the map by going Top 20.
Clip of Mark Morrison - "Let's Get Down"
Mark: Baby let's get down
We can make it freaky
The second single didn't do as well. Although, I do notice he beat [brief clip of "Mo Money Mo Problems"] Puff Daddy to a golf-themed video.
Todd: But then, that third single.
Clip of live performance of "Return of the Mack"
Mark: Come on, everybody, come on!
Todd (VO): Oh, man.
Todd: Here we go.
Clip of Ant & Dec introducing Mark Morrison on CD:UK
Dec Donnelly: Here's your raincoat back. Thank you!
Ant McPartlin: Do I have to do it?
Dec: Just say it.
Ant: Do I have to say it?
Dec: Say it!
Ant: At last, "The Return of the Mack".
Dec: YES!
The big hit
Todd: There was this period in the mid-90s when all the party rap had these really loud drums. Like...[beatboxes to drum beat from Coolio - "Fantastic Voyage" playing in the background] And there's a part of me that still says, "That's what all rap and all music should sound like," so "Return of the Mack" has me right away.
Video for "Return of the Mack" starts
Todd (VO): I found one British writer who kinda [shot of highlighted quote by Tom Ewing from FreakyTrigger.co.uk] marveled at how good the song is. Not only because it sounded good, but because it sounded American. That's pretty impressive considering. In one of Mark's interviews I read, [shot of article from The Guardian where...] they had to define the word, "mack" for their readers.
Todd: It's not a goddamn [image of model wearing a...] raincoat, you limeys. Like I know I said the Brits caught up with hip-hop, but there's still a big divide.
Montage clips of Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden - "Bonkers"; Stormzy - "Shut Up"
Todd (VO): British hip-hop is so different from the hip-hop we know that it's not even really hip-hop anymore. It's its own separate thing with its own name, and you wouldn't really associate the two.
Todd: But "Return of the Mack" pulled it off.
Clip of "Return of the Mack"
Mark: Well, I tried to tell you so (Yes, I did)
Todd (VO): DJs in America could play this song alongside TLC and Coolio and Puffy and Jodeci, and it would fit right in.
Todd: It even starts with a sample of Tom Tom Club's, "Genius of Love".
Snippet of "Return of the Mack" opening
Todd (VO): Which...I mean, that was not even the only...
Todd: ...big mid-90s hit that sampled that.
Clip of Mariah Carey - "Fantasy"
Mariah Carey: Sweet, sweet fantasy, baby
Todd: That's just prelude. Then, Mark comes in.
Clip of "Return of the Mack"
Mark: Ooooh-oh-oh-oh
Todd: That is an entrance.
Todd (VO): Like, a lot of the work is being done by the beat, and Mark knows not to get in its way. He doesn't do any of those crazy Usher vocal runs or show off at all.
Todd: Except that bit right at the beginning.
Live performance of "Return of the Mack"
Mark: Ooooh-oh-oh-oh
Todd (VO): You hear that bit and you know...
Todd: ...he's on.
Mark: 'Cause I knew it from the start
Baby, when you broke my heart
Todd (VO): I don't know how many times I heard "Return of the Mack" before I even realized it was a breakup song. Part of it is his nasal singing voice, which...
Todd: ...makes him kinda hard to understand.
Mark: You lied to me
Todd (VO): Honestly, I associate these kinds of vocals with funk songs that are a little looser and sillier than this like, "Word Up".
Todd: But Mark Morrison isn't silly.
Todd (VO): He doesn't grin, he doesn't flinch. He just gets up there looking...
Todd: ...effortlessly cool.
Mark: You lied to me
Todd (VO): And maybe that weird singing meant I missed some of the lyrics, but...
Todd: ...mostly it's right up there.
Mark: 'Cause she said she'd never turn on me
Todd (VO): This is a song of heartbreak!
Todd: Of emotional torment!
Todd (VO): He was betrayed!
Todd: He cried and cried!
Mark: Yes, I cried, yes I cried
Return of the Mack
Todd: [shrugs] Does this sound like a song about crying to you?
Todd (VO): No, it never dawned on me to think of it that way. This is the best kind of breakup song: the "who needed you anyway" song.
Todd: I guess I kinda think of that as more of a...
Video for Beyoncé - "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"
Todd (VO): ...female genre. I think I was even starting to [clip of Kelly Clarkson - "Since U Been Gone"] get jealous that the ladies get all the good ones.
Todd: How did I fucking miss...
Video for "Return of the Mack"
Todd (VO): ...that the fellas had this as their post-breakup stepping out song?! Like I can't even think of any others, but "Return of the Mack" evens the score just on its own.
Todd: Like, yeah, there's also...
Video for...
Todd (VO): ...Jason Derulo's only good song, "Ridin' Solo". But there are no hard feelings in that one.
Jason Derulo: I'm so sorry that it didn't work out
Todd: There's a lot more of an edge to "Return of the Mack".
Clip of "Return of the Mack"
Mark: And all the nasty things you've done (Oh, oh, oh)
Todd (VO): This is a revenge song. Like, you can tell why [clip of "Provide" by...] G-Eazy, who just had his own [clip of G-Eazy performing with...] rough breakup from Halsey, is trying use this song to fuel his own comeback.
Todd: And Mark Morrison can thank G-Eazy for proving that the beat doesn't do everything. You also have to be actually cool to pull this off.
Todd (VO): "Return of the Mack" is supposedly a song about being laid low.
Clip of Mark Morrison studio interview
Mark: Sexual betrayal. Like... just like "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", Marvin Gaye, sexual betrayal.
Cheated on. Cucked. Taking a giant L.
Todd: But Mark is not really good at playing heartbreak. He's great at playing the mack.
Video for "Return of the Mack"
Todd (VO): Emotional arcs are for movies, not three-minute songs. If Mark Morrison had even remotely showed any vulnerability, this song would fall apart immediately. You wouldn't buy it.
Todd: But because the beat goes so hard, you already know he's not fronting, he's not secretly still broken up inside.
Todd (VO): He's gonna bounce back so hard, it'll be like the mack never left! He's such a mack that there's three of him!
Mark: Here I am
This is almost not even a comeback song; it's nothing but triumph.
Todd: This is the [brief clip of Queen's...] "We Are the Champions" of breakup songs.
Girl: But Mark....
Todd (VO): The most amazing thing about this song is the bridge, where we hear how and why he got dumped.
Todd: [pause] Because his career wasn't taking off.
Girl: Stop lying about your big break
Stop putting me down
Todd (VO): This song is not just about his revenge, it is his revenge! He wrote a song about how he's gonna prove her wrong, and then the song took off and proved her wrong!
Todd: That's one of the most baller moves I've ever seen!
Todd (VO): And the fact that it's so well remembered bears out how good it is, so now we have to ask the question...
Todd: ...Why didn't he return?
Todd (VO): Why couldn't he do in real life what he did in the song?
Todd: [pause] Well.
The failed follow-up
Todd: Mark Morrison had an amazing 1996.
Video for Mark Morrison - "Trippin'"
Todd (VO): In the U.K., "Return of the Mack" went #1, and it was just the first of five Top 10 hits that year. Five Top 10 hits off your debut album is incredible.
Todd: It might still be a record over there.
Clip of Mark Morrison performing "Trippin'" on Top of the Pops
Male Host: The mack is back.
Mark: (Trippin') I be trippin'
Todd (VO): You know what's funny is his accent is way more noticeable on his other songs. Personally, I'm not sure if these slower songs fit him, but, uh...
Todd: ...here's one I liked.
Clip of Mark Morrison - "Horny"
Mark: Listen girl
Get horny, get horny
I said, "You got me horny"
Get horny, get horny
Todd: [chuckles] This is just so funny to me. This is a time when [clip of "Never Never Love" by...] Simply Red was still one of the bigger names in British soul, [back to "Horny"] and now one of the biggest songs in the country goes, "Get horny!" I imagine them all just dropping their teacups with the Queen fainting.
Mark: I said, "You got me horny"
Todd (VO): You can't not like this.
Todd: Remember fun R&B? What happened to that?
Clip of Mark Morrison - "Moan and Groan"
Mark: If you wanna take me home you better make me moan
Gonna moan
Todd (VO): The thing is, none of these hit in America. This song, "Moan and Groan", is his only other hit that also crossed over into the American charts. And only barely.
Todd: Again, I prefer his more upbeat songs, but you know, it definitely could've been bigger. Why didn't he hit? [shots of Billboard articles: "U.K. Cultivates Vibrant R&B Scene"...] Morrison wasn't just gonna be big, he was gonna bust open the American market for the entire scene. ["Mack Life To Bolster U.K. R&B"...] Lots of people thought he was gonna start a new British invasion for R&B. [...and "U.K. Is Blue Over U.S. Radio's Reluctance To Break Acts"] He was primed for a lot more crossover success than he ended up with. If you're American, you probably don't know a thing about Mark Morrison.
Todd (VO): I was a kid, but even if you were more plugged in to R&B back then, you probably still didn't know. Why haven't you heard these other songs? Why didn't you know he was from England? Why hadn't you heard his accent in interviews and shit?
Todd: Well, here's the thing. Mark Morrison's year was 1996, but it took a while before his people realized, [image of old British guy imposed over U.K. flag; Todd puts on a stuffy British accent] "Oi! There might be some international appeal for this geezer! Ship "Return of the Mack" to America and see if they'll like that! Maybe sell some of these [image of merchandise for...] Spice Girls tapes, too, while we're at it!" So, because of that delay...
Clip of another Mark Morrison live performance
Todd (VO): ...he did not hit his peak in America until the summer of '97.
Todd: And Mark Morrison's 1997 was not good at all.
Clip of studio interview
Mark: There's gonna be people out there that always judge me [points at handcuffs on his wrist] as a criminal.
Todd (VO): You remember [clip of Mark starting a performance being escorted by "policewomen"] how he wanted to be Bobby Brown and 2Pac? Well, he was, in that he was...
Todd: ...constantly in trouble with the law.
Todd (VO): There are so many things on his rap sheet that I can't even keep the timeline straight. I don't know what brought him down exactly because I've read so many conflicting reports on what did it. [clip of AP News report on Mark Morrison] Was it the aforementioned bar brawl? Was it the time he tried to bring a gun onto a plane? Attacked a photographer on the street in London? [image of NME paper with Mark Morrison on the front page] Driving recklessly without a license? Was it the time he threatened a cop with a stun gun, which are super illegal in the U.K.?! Was it the time he fled to Barbados to avoid arrest?!
Todd: I don't know which of these did him in, but...
Todd (VO): ...I imagine it's hard to promote yourself overseas when you're in this much trouble at home. I'm not sure he ever even...
Todd: ...got to enjoy his success in America or come do shows or promotion. I don't know if he was even allowed to leave the country!
Clip of news coverage of one of Mark Morrison's arrests
Reporter: The self-styled bad boy of music has been moved to the prison hospital at London's Wormwood Scrubs.
Todd (VO): What I am clear on is that for one of these offenses, he got sentenced to community service, and he got tired of doing it, so about a third of the way through, he got someone else to pretend to be him and do the rest.
Todd: And that seems to have been the last straw.
Todd (VO): In the early months of 1998, since he couldn't be entrusted with probation, [shot of MTV News article: "Mark Morrison..."] he was sentenced to a year in prison.
Clip of opening for... wait for it...
British Cop Stereotype: I don't give a monkey's what it takes. Just find out who's the mack!
Mark: Who is the mack
In '97, he got off one last new single called, "Who's the Mack?" I mean, that's already a bad sign, right?
Todd: That kind of felt like a repeat of his biggest hit.
Todd (VO): It came out on an EP, not even a full album. And then he went to prison...
Todd: ...and no one ever really heard of him again.
Did he ever do anything else?
Todd: [beat] Now hold on! Since when has bad behavior stopped an R&B singer?!
Video for "You Remind Me of Something" by...
Todd (VO): We were finding out way worse shit about R. Kelly at the time! His career was fine! [clip of Mark Morrison being released from prison] Mark Morrison's whole thing was that he was a bad boy, right? It's not like he hurt his image. Why didn't he keep going?
Todd: First off, his big post-release comeback single wasn't great.
Clip of Mark Morrison ft. Connor Reeves - "Best Friend"
Mark: Brother, it ain't easy
When I saw you with him
Todd (VO): It was also about being cheated on, so he's repeating himself again with a theme you...
Todd: ...really don't wanna repeat.
Mark: My best friend
Todd: And yes, there may have been a...teeny-tiny bit of racism involved.
Clip of TFI interview
Todd (VO): These stuffy British labels had never had a dangerous black man on their roster. Maybe the culture was not ready to handle that. But...
Todd: ...there may have been an even worse decision in Mark Morrison's life than criminal behavior. [pause] He signed with Suge Knight.
Todd (VO): Signing with Death Row Records has always been a bad idea, but it was at least a lucrative one for a while. By the early 2000s, though, Death Row was in bad shape.
Todd: Maybe they thought Mark Morrison was gonna be their comeback: Return of the Suge.
Clip of studio interview
Todd (VO): But it didn't happen. In fact, after Mark signed with them, they never put out his album...
Todd: ...or anyone's album except [brief clip of "Changes" by...] dead 2Pac.
Todd (VO): I kinda get the sense that Mark brought the same bad judgment to his career that he did with his personal life, and that no one really wanted to work with him anymore.
Todd: After Death Row, Mark signed on to [image of Kevin Campbell] some soccer star's vanity label and... [shot of BBC News article: "Court halts Mark Morrison album"] their relationship eventually devolved into legal issues.
Video for Mark Morrison ft. DMX - "Innocent Man"
Todd (VO): Mark eventually put out his second album independently in 2006, ten years after "Return of the Mack". And by that point, his moment was well and truly gone.
Todd: He has never put out a third album.
Clip of Mark Morrison - "I Am What I Am"
Mark: I know what I am
Todd (VO): But he's also never stopped recording. He keeps putting out singles, so good for him. He also kept having [shot of another BBC News article: "R&B star Mark Morrison arrested"...] trouble with the law, but that seems to be firmly in the past now. [...and Leicester News article: "Mark Morrison 'seriously considering' challenging Peter Soulsby to become next mayor of Leicester"] Last year, he announced he was gonna run for mayor of Leicester.
Todd: [pause] Good luck, my man.
Did he deserve better?
Todd: Well...I don't know if "deserve" is the word, but was he talented enough to do better? Yeah, he was.
Clip of "Return of the Mack"
Mark: Return of the mack
Todd (VO): Fortunately, he seems to just not to have had the professionalism to stay out of trouble. In this country, he's only known for "Return of the Mack", and in his own country, he's known for blowing it with stupid antics. If he'd had just kept his head on straight, he could've been bigger than...
Todd: I don't know, [shrugs] All Saints?
Todd (VO): But when your one song is this good, maybe you don't need to return. "Return of the Mack" is still one of the best songs of the '90s. And actually, you know what, maybe that comeback actually is still around the corner. Who knows?
Todd: Let's just hope someone better than G-Eazy has him back.
Mark: Return of the Mack (Up and down)
You know that I'll be back
Closing Tag Song: A.R.P. - "Return of the Mack"
THE END
"Return of the Mack" is owned by Atlantic Records
This video is owned by me
THANK YOU TO THE LOYAL PATRONS!!