"Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" is a song by English jazz-rap group Us3. It was originally released in October 1992 as the lead single from their debut album Hand on the Torch.
The song was recorded as a demo a year before the group's first release and features a sample of Herbie Hancock's song "Cantaloupe Island". It did not chart in their native UK, but in the US, "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the group's only top 40 single. It was subsequently re-released in UK where it peaked at No. 23.
"Cantaloop" was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on March 25, 1994 for selling over 500,000 copies.
The original song, "Cantaloupe Island", is a 16 bar repeated chart consisting of F minor for 4 measures, D♭7 for 4 measures, D minor for 4 measures, then F minor again. "Cantaloop" excludes the D minor section, uses the F minor section during the verses, and goes between the F minor and D♭7 during the horn riffs and trumpet solo. The featured soloist is Philip Winstead.
The song makes notable mention of the Birdland jazz club in New York City in its opening line, "Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, we have something special down here at Birdland this evening: a recording for Blue Note Records." The line, spoken by Pee Wee Marquette, is taken from Art Blakey's first Birdland album, A Night at Birdland Vol. 1.
The song features recurring samples, particularly in the beginning, of two men saying, "Yeah!", and, "What's that?" Both samples are from the intro to Lou Donaldson's song, "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky (From Now On)".
"Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)" is played in the films Renaissance Man (1994), Super Mario Bros. (1993), It Takes Two, Sisters (2015), and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013), and in the TV shows New York Undercover and Hindsight. It is also featured in the PlayStation 4 video game Knack II (2017), during the end credits showing Knack in his various sizes dancing to the song, and was used as the theme song for The Connection radio program on WBUR.
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^ "Knack 2". Playstation. Retrieved September 10, 2017.