Baha Men Bark Back

Two years after "Who Let the Dogs Out" became an inescapable anthem at the nation's ballparks, hockey rinks and football stadiums, the Baha Men have beat the one-hit-wonder jinx by landing songs in four of this week's eleven top grossing movies: Men in Black II, Scooby Doo, Crocodile Hunter and Like Mike.

"It's just another way of getting exposure for our music," says drummer/vocalist Colyn "Mo" Grant. "Not everyone that goes to the movies listens to the radio and vice versa, so I think it's a great vehicle for getting people to take note of you."

Purveyors of junkanoo, a kind of kitchen sink Caribbean-flavored music, the Baha Men released Move It Like This, the follow-up to the 2000's smash Who Let The Dogs Out, in April and have kept busy in the months since. "Mike D of the Beastie Boys had a track for Scooby Doo, and we went in and recorded it," Grant says. "It really is a great song for us. Crocodile Hunter was a little different, as we did a re-make of Elton John's classic 'Crocodile Rock,' but we changed the lyrics to suit the movie. Some of the other songs were already out there and the movie people came to us because they thought the song fit the movie."

As the Baha Men have been together since 1979, Grant takes issue with the one-hit-wonder tag. "The record came out in 2000, and here it is only 2002 and one CD later," he says. "All the other groups on the one-hit-wonder list are from the Sixties or Seventies through the Nineties. We had seven prior records, several of which went platinum elsewhere in the world. Who Let the Dogs Out just put us on the map in the U.S."

That said, Grant is fairly well resigned to being known as a member of that "Who Let the Dogs Out" band. "I think we'll have that label forever, due to the fact that a song like that comes around once in every blue moon and also because the song was a worldwide phenomenon. Like I say, 'Never kill the dog with the golden check.' The fact is that the song made Baha Men a household name, and you can't argue with success."

COLIN DEVENISH
(July 17, 2002)