In 1992, I became a big fan of Dutch techno group 2 Unlimited. In the United States, they are best known for the songs Get Ready (formerly Get Ready for This), Twilight Zone and No Limit. In Europe, they’re known and loved for a whole list of successful singles and album tracks. It was Twilight Zone that introduced the nation to the group that, 30 years out, remains popular here.
Their first two US singles were for some reason reversed. This song was released first here, followed by what was then titled Get Ready for This. In Europe, the reverse was true. The lyrics were written solo by the group’s rapper.
As an aside, following hearing Twilight Zone seize the airwaves on two radio stations in Las Vegas, I became enthralled with the single and group. So I did what any seventh-grader would do: I went to the music store in my neighborhood and sung the chorus to the clerk.
After cringing at my less than talented singing, she immediately walked over to the wall where the singles were and took a copy of the song. I then purchased the song and listened to it over and over. But I didn’t get an allowance at the time, so I did what I had to do: I used part of my lunch money for the week to pay for it. I went hungry for one day, but it was worth it.
I loved the song so much that the cassette single snapped. I liked them so much that in 1993, I decided to start a fan club for them here in the States. This was before the internet truly became popular, so I launched the club on America Online, better known as simply AOL.
That fan club, which my mother called the Unlimited Too Fan Club, ran from 1992 to 1996, when I was still in junior high school and then high school. I closed the fan club in 1996 when the original performers left the group due to money and creative disagreements, because the producers replaced them with female performers, something that I felt was treasonous. Rather than keep the club running, as I should have done, I shut it down. I shouldn’t have done that.
At its peak, my fan club had over 1,200 people from all over the USA, Canada and even Europe, even though the club was designed for American and Canadian fans.
I ran the fan club’s website and distributed a weekly newsletter that was sent via email. I had the support of and assistance from all three of the group’s record labels within the United States, Radikal Records, Critique Records and Hot Productions. The only label that exists to this day is Radikal.
The membership numbers may not seem impressive now, but back then, it was a remarkable feat, especially given how young the mainstream internet was and especially for someone who ran a fun club as an after-school project. An article that I co-wrote about the group remains online to this day.
For my fan club, I was noted in The Press of Atlantic City and Rolling Stone. I was also mentioned and interviewed by radio stations all over the world, including the United Kingdom, Austria, Australia, The Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and Las Vegas to name just a few.
I was so well known for my fan club in high school that I was noted several times over in the Oakcrest High School (Mays Landing, New Jersey) Class of 1997 yearbook for doing what I had to do to get 2 Unlimited’s music played on the school’s closed-circuit television station loudly and often.
I did a lot of things to get 2 Unlimited out there here in the States. One tactic that I used saw me encourage my members to call their local radio stations to request their songs, an action that was met with some degree of success.
One of the many other things that I did saw me go to the local music stores (things that did in fact exist back then) and ask the managers how sales were doing, and I was usually met with positive results.
As I alluded to earlier, two of their American record labels failed and shut down in the late 1990’s. This shutdown resulted in no further singles being released, including the original group’s farewell single Spread Your Love. It was around that point that one of the US labels told me about some troubling allegations against the rapper, so I don’t know if the lack of a final single was financial or due to those allegations, allegations that are dead and buried now. He took ownership of his actions and he has moved on. I chose to ignore the allegations and kept the club moving forward until the original performers officially left.
In my adult years, I briefly worked with the original performers and their management to moderate their social media profiles, but for one reason or another, I abandoned that project.
I would also go on to help Phil Wilde, one of the group’s producers and one of the architects of their most popular song Get Ready (formerly Get Ready for This) secure a U.S. record deal with Radikal Records for the single Get Up And Dance.
To this day, Radikal remains one of the world’s leading dance/EDM labels and one of the labels responsible for 2 Unlimited’s presence in the United States in the 1990’s.
Back then, when it was known as Get Ready for This, perhaps their most successful singles in the United States did well in 1992. But that wasn’t the end of the single’s American tale. In 1994, a radio DJ in Chicago heard the song playing at an NBA event. He liked it so much that he played the track during his next shift.
The DJ’s selection led to a domino effect where radio stations around the nation picked it up and ran with it. So their rebirth here is all thanks to a radio DJ from The Windy City.
My fellow students on my bus route considered it “my” song even though I was just the fan club president and had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the actual production of the song.
On one occasion, I fell asleep on the bus ride (it was a one hour drive to school and I boarded at 6:00 a.m.) and the song started playing. Two of the other kids woke me up and one said, “your song’s on!” Good times!
By the way, in 1993, the debut single from their second album, No Limit, got moderate airplay on radio stations here in the United States. That single would hit #1 in 36 other countries throughout Europe and Australia. The song enjoyed repeated but minor success in nightclubs and on the related charts. A few of their other singles did quite well in the clubs as well even if the mainstream charts didn’t give them the success that they had in Europe.
Soon, as pertains to Get Ready for This, other stations nationwide followed suit and the end result was that the label had to rush to respond to the unexpected return of the single by putting in an emergency order to have cassette and CD singles duplicated and rush shipped to record stores nationwide. I remember learning about that during my weekly phone call to one of their record labels, something that I did to keep the website and the weekly email newsletter current.
Sales of Get Ready for This did so well that in 1994, the song re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 charts to the point that it ultimately peaked at #38. That may not seem like much, but the unexpected revival forever established them as a Top 40 group here in this country, something that can never be taken away from them.
Add to that the continued support on the radio and at athletic events and you have a group whose fame will never fade away here. Their music has been used in television shows, movies, television and radio stations and in a ton of other ways.
Other singles were released here, though none of them enjoyed the success of their first two singles.
The group has appeared in a variety of places here, but one of the most surprising and awesome exposures were on a music awards show. They had the honor of appearing on the World Music Awards three years in a row.
The awards show aired in the US in syndication and 2 Unlimited’s performance was well-received, especially in 1995, when they were enjoying their newfound US success. I found myself to be quite popular for that as my fellow high school students knew about my success as the group’s fan club president.
As a testament to how popular 2 Unlimited remains in the United States to this day, Get Ready for This and Twilight Zone play quite heavily on Sirius XM’s 90’s on 9 station. At one point when I listened to the channel, the songs played twice in the space of three hours.
The tracks likely have heavy exposure on its other dance-oriented channels.
The hit single 1991 (Europe) and 1992 (US and Canada) hit Get Ready for This, is a song that is now known as Get Ready. The change in the title is due to an issue with the producing using a sample for the “yeah, yeah.” Neither they, nor any of their record labels cleared the samples, something that one of the producers admitted to me in 2011 during an interview for the professional internet station that I ran at that time.
To be fair, however, back in the 1990’s dance music era, hardly anyone cleared samples, so 2 Unlimited and its producers are not bad guys. They simply fouled up by not ensuring that all samples were in fact cleared.
As a result of the UK-based producer that made the “yeah, yeahs,” which are a call-and-response that makes the song popular at sporting events all across the United States, raising an issue, that producer now has a credit and now gets royalties.
Apparently, to avoid paying further royalties as they are with the original song, the song was re-titled and the “y’all ready for this” and “yeah, yeah” were re-recorded.
As another quick aside, back in 2011, the rapper and I met in New York City and we went to lunch. He gave me my lunch money back. So there’s that. That lunch money, by the way, was the best money I ever spent as it started the journey that saw me as their US fan club president.
Unfortunately, I am no longer associated in any way with 2 Unlimited due to a falling out with the group’s rapper. The causes for the falling out aren’t important now and I would have handled it differently if I had the opportunity to do things over.
Though the falling out still has its consequences, I will always remember 2 Unlimited as one of the greatest and most successful groups ever, especially given the fact that the group has existed for more than 30 years.