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Tru Faith and Dub Conspiracy's debut garage offering started its journey to the dance floor as a bootleg cover of Adina Howard's US No1, also entitled 'Freak Like Me'... Due for commercial release this summer, the track is already an underground anthem following months of extensive airplay on pirate UK radio stations.Possibly the most obscure act on this album, neither Tru Faith nor Dub Conspiracy merits a Wikipedia entry, and the article about the song makes no mention of this version either. In fact, pretty much the only thing I know about this particular version is that the uncredited singer is Imaani, previously heard on Now 40 as the 1998 Eurovision contestant. She didn't win.
Adina Howard's original was only a minor UK chart hit, but a big favourite on the RnB scene and much rotated on The Box channel. It's credited, if that's the word, with pioneering the "hypersexual" style among female singers in the genre, although it's something I find impossible to take at all seriously. The language barrier about the word "freak" doesn't entirely help here either, it always makes me think of a man with three arms or something. It was obviously familiar enough to clubbers to justify this bootleg (I wonder if they mean it was originally a remix with the original vocal?) in a style which faintly resembles Shanks & Bigfoot's chart-topper 'Sweet Like Chocolate' from the previous year with added garage beats. But there's not a lot to interest the casual listener and I only dimly recall this. There was of course another bootleg of this song a year later which became rather better known, but that's a few albums further down the line...
Available on: Freak Like Me
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