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To most people, the idea of massive, rap-rock crossover hits invading the mainstream was something of a late-90s/early-2000s phenomenon. It wasn’t just your Limp Bizkits and your Last Resorts; it was Alive by P.O.D., Heaven is a Halfpipe by OPM, Kid Rock’s American Badass… the list goes on. But there’s one song that deserves to be in the conversation of great rap-rock chart victories as much any from that time – and it came out a full five years before most of those hits.
All it took was a member of Run DMC to remix an album track by a bunch of skate-punks from New Jersey to achieve a monster hit single, pipping some of the biggest new names in music to MTV award glory in the process.
They quickly faded into obscurity before the nu metal juggernaut had even revved its engine, but for a short window, No Fronts turned Dog Eat Dog into actual pop stars.
Formed in Bergen County in 1990, Dog Eat Dog were one of many positive hardcore bands from the fertile New Jersey scene of the time. They managed to secure a deal with Roadrunner Records after an early tour with their friends in Biohazard and their debut EP, 1993’s Warrant, and 1994 full-length debut All Boro Kings, arrived to little fanfare.
In fact, the original album version of No Fronts was released as the band’s first single in 1994 and failed to trouble the charts anywhere. Something which, for an underground hardcore band who were beginning to dabble with rap, hip-hop and horn sections in their material, was hardly surprising.
So, Dog Eat Dog did what most bands in their position would do: toured like maniacs. It led to the band making decent inroads in Europe.
“On the Biohazard tour we were getting a really good reception,” frontman John Connor told No Echo. “We did sold out shows every night. People were starting to know the words and we were selling a lot of merch for a support band.”
Roadrunner were keen for the band to head back into the studio, but Dog Eat Dog looked to capatalise on their newfound popularity and returned to Europe for the 1995 festival season, which would include their biggest ever show at the Dynamo Festival.
Unfortunately, at this point, they had already released three singles from All Boro Kings, and none of them had done much business. So, they enlisted the help of New York hip hop royalty and Run DMC producer Jam Master Jay, who remixed No Fronts for a re-release.
It proved something of a masterstroke; the song was given a significant polish, with bolder brass, loads of DJ scratching, Dave Neabore’s hardcore bassline becoming a bobbing groove and the posi chorus cranked up a few notches. All of which made it inescapably massive.
Soon it was getting a ton of MTV airplay, being featured on Beavis and Butthead (where the band were called “a bunch of Butt-munches”) and before you knew it, Dog Eat Dog, a band who had never even charted before, found themselves peaking at number nine on the UK singles chart and were being introduced on Top of the Pops by members of Boyzone. Dog Eat Dog were pop stars!
“We were on MTV so much that we were getting recognised on the streets of Europe,” Connor told No Echo, although it hadn’t translated quite so much in the States. “It was like fame was a place you could visit and then you could come back home.”
It was while they were back home in the US that Dog Eat Dog heard about the event that arguably peaked their career in Europe: a nomination for Best Breakthrough Artist at the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards.
“We had just finished a US tour opening for 311 and No Doubt,” Connor recalled. “The day our drummer Dave Maltby quit, we found out about the nomination.”
And so, on November 23, 1995, Dog Eat Dog travelled to Paris to as massive, ahem, underdogs in a category that included Canadian superstar singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette, critically acclaimed trip-hop pioneers Portishead, geek rock megastars Weezer and German rap-metal band H-Blockx (perhaos the only band less likely to win that Dog Eat Dog themselves).
As Patsy Kensit and INXS frontman Michael Hutchence took to the stage to announce the winner, surely no one could have imagined Kensit would read out the name Dog Eat Dog…but that’s exactly what she did.
“It was pretty surreal, and still is, honestly,” smiled Connor. “It felt good to us because it was a fan-voted award. Probably the best thing about winning was that it was broadcast on US MTV on Thanksgiving Day, so all of our families, friends, and haters saw that live on TV. It was a proud moment for those that had supported us from the start.”
The band did look shocked as they ambled up onstage to accept the award; it was as high-profile a moment as Dog Eat Dog had ever received, and still is to this day.
A year later, in one of the most 90s things you’ll ever see, they were invited back to the MTV awards, being interviewed by Julian Clary backstage as one-hit wonder Mike Flowers tended the bar behind them, but All Boro Kings follow-up Play Games didn’t do the business, commercially speaking.
Still, Dog Eat Dog continue to make music and kick it just for fun, and their brief but highly enjoyable foray into the mainstream certainly set the tone for nu metal’s invasion half a decade later.
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