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Charted: October 1992


Rating: 3.668 (average of 10 ratings)


Genre: dance/electronica


Quotable: --


Album Tracks:

  1. Connected
  2. Ground Level
  3. Everything
  4. Sketch
  5. Fade Away
  6. All Night Long
  7. Step It Up
  8. Playing with Fire
  9. Pressure
  10. Chicken Shake
  11. Creation
  12. Don’t Let Up
  13. The End


Sales:

sales in U.S. only --
sales in U.K. only - estimated 300,000
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated 300,000


Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 92
peak on U.K. album chart 2


Singles/Hit Songs:

  • Connected (9/26/92) #20 US, #18 UK, #5 MR
  • Step It Up (12/5/92) #58 US, #12 UK, #19 MR
  • Ground Level (2/20/93) #19 UK
  • Creation (5/29/93) #19 UK


Awards:

Brits Award for Album of the Year. Click to go to awards page.


Connected
Stereo MC’s
Review:
Connected is the third release from the Stereo MC's” (Cd Universe) and their “American breakthrough” (All Music Guide). The group is “a London trio of remixers who ferment their unique blend of rap, R&B and dance music with a healthy blend of European techno, dub and cool jazz, putting them in the vanguard of the music’s new wave along with such irrefutably hip hoppers as Digable Planets” (Cd Universe).

“The raps almost seem like an afterthought, yet that doesn’t distract from the sheer pleasure of their sound” (All Music Guide).

“Augmented by the vocal trio of Cath Coffey, Verona Davis and Andrea Groves, Connected is a brave new vision of dance music, as illustrated by the sultry title track, with its swampy rhythmic underpinning, ‘60s soul jazz punctuations, beefy bass line and its incantory chants, urging on the dancers to greater self-expression, personal responsibility and intellectual curiosity. These social themes run through Connected, augmented by the type of hip Afro funk-jazz mix that distinguished early archetypes of this rap style such as Gil-Scott Heron” (Cd Universe).

“Included in Q Magazine’s ‘90 Best Albums of the 1990s’” (Amazon.com) and “ranked #52 in Q’s ‘100 Greatest British Albums’” (Cd Universe).


Review Source(s):


Last updated April 7, 2008.