The Men Who Let the Dogs Out

If you've been in the vicinity of a radio this summer, you've probably heard "Who Let the Dogs Out" by the Baha Men, a pop group from the unlikely locale of the Bahamas. The song is an odd mix of Bahamian junkanoo -- a rhythmic island music that uses traditional instruments such as cowbells and goatskin drums -- with Miami bass, high-velocity rapping and the most effective use of barking in a pop song since George Clinton's "Atomic Dog."

You might be tempted to write off the band's late-in-life success as an annoying novelty fluke, ... la those old dudes who did "Macarena" -- and, hey, you won't be disputed here. Except for the fluke part.

The group formed in the early Eighties, but it wasn't until 1991 that its music came across the desk of A&R honcho Steve Greenberg, who has championed the Baha Men ever since, signing the band first to Atlantic Records, then later to Mercury and finally to his own S-Curve label.

"At a major label, it's very hard to get the forces marshaled behind something like a junkanoo record, so we never really got the focus that we needed to bring their music to the masses," says Greenberg. "But I noticed over nine years that if people did hear the Baha Men, they loved them, so when I started my own label, I said, 'OK, this is it. I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is.'"

To stack the deck, Greenberg made a few smart choices. He persuaded the group's founder and leader, fifty-one-year-old bassist Isaiah Taylor, to record "Who Let the Dogs Out" -- originally a regional hit in the Caribbean. And when original singer Nehemiah Hield left the band to tour with Lenny Kravitz, a more blatant appeal was made to the hip-hop generation with the recruitment of younger, hotter, often shirtless frontmen Omerit Hield (Nehemiah's nephew) and Rick Carey.

"I had a pretty good job as a bank teller, making pretty good money, so I didn't want to quit at first," admits Omerit Hield. "But I think we bring a different flavor to the group."

Greenberg officially incorporated his label in early May; by Memorial Day, the song had already been added by a half-dozen radio stations, quickly moving from there to summer-anthem status. "They're a real band," he insists. "They've made seven albums. I don't look at this as a one-hit-wonder kind of thing. Our mission now is to prove that this is one of the great live bands in the world."

Well, first things first. When we contacted Hield, the group was getting ready for an appearance on Nickelodeon's Slime Time Live. "Before this tour, I really had to practice to get that bark just right," he says, adding with a sigh, "Now I don't have to practice anymore. It just comes natural."

MARK BINELLI
(October 20, 2000)