Freestyler (5:00)

“Freestyler” is a single by the Bomfunk MC’s released in 1999. It topped the charts in many European countries, Australia, New Zealand and Turkey, and peaked at number two in the United Kingdom, where it was the 23rd biggest-selling single of the year 2000.

The song is notable for slipping an expletive past the censors. The line “So who the fuck is Alice, is she from Buckingham Palace?” (a reference to Smokie’s song “Living Next Door to Alice”) was aired unedited on MTV.

Further references in the lyrics are made to the song Karma Chameleon by Culture Club, singer Celine Dion and porn film Debbie Does Dallas.

The music video was mainly filmed at the Hakaniemi metro station, an underground station on the Helsinki Metro line, in Finland and with platforms 21 metres below sea level. It shows an unnamed youth catching a train while listening to Freestyler on his MiniDisc player. He soon discovers that the remote control for his player has the ability to control the flow of time for one or a group of individuals. Realising this ability, he spends the duration of the video pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding dancers and people in the station until coming across the members of Bomfunk MC’s, where his remote malfunctions, sending the whole video into a rapid rewind and back to the beginning. The music video may be inspired by and seems to use similar themes as System F’s 1999 “Out of the blue” music video.

The video is shown in pseudo black-and-white with a filter allowing shades of orange (the colour scheme of the Helsinki Metro) to show through. The dancers and breakdancers in the video wear garments of orange leading to additional highlighting.