Bob Sinclar Tells All: The Stories Behind His Hit Records

With over 27 albums under his belt, Christophe Le Friant—best known as his alter-ego Bob Sinclar—has been jetting around the globe burning up dancefloors across Europe for more than 20 years. Whether in the studios or in the clubs, Bob Sinclar has proven time and time again why he is the God of French house music, rivaled only by his colleague David Guetta.

A producer, DJ, record label owner, and—now that he's bought and re-opened Miami's Club Amnesia—nightclub impresario, Sinclar works under many names—The Mighty Bop, Africanism, Chris The French Kiss—as well as comprising one third of Yellow Production and one fourth of Reminiscence Quartet. Fourteen years after his break-out record "Gym Tonic," Sinclar’s biggest hit to date has been "Love Generation" featuring former Wailers lead singer, Gary Pine, which was chosen as the theme song for the 2006 World Cup and went to the No. 1 spot in six countries including the U.S. Dance charts.

In 2009, he realized his reggae dreams by producing Made In Jamaica with Sly & Robbie’s Taxi Gang—the same ensemble that legendary French producer Serge Gainsbourg used on his classic Aux Armes et Cætera. Sinclar's project Made In Jamaica garnered him his second Grammy nomination. Since then he's gone on to collab with dancehall superstar Sean Paul.

Unafraid to funk with various genres in the same musical pot, Sinclar has proven that he's not some one-hit-wonder House DJ masquerading as a producer. So Complex asked him to break down the stories behind some of his biggest hits—in his own, perhaps slightly reckless words. You'll have to pardon his French.

Written by Sherman Escoffery (@JustSherman)

Follow @ComplexMusic

Album: Paradise
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “I wanted to kill this bitch [Jane Fonda] because when I tried to clear the sample, first she said, ‘No! I don’t want my vocal on top of a dance music song.’ So after many exchanges with lawyers, I think she said yes because I was signed with Warner and her husband, Ted Turner, at that time was the boss of Warner. So finally we cleared it. [Laughing] What was the question again?”

Album: Enjoy
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “I love Brazil because my first big house track was ‘Outra Lugar’ with Salomé De Bahia; it’s a cover of ‘Under the Star’ by Stevie Wonder. I did it in Portuguese because I love that song and the background vocals sound very Brazilian to me. I love the Brazilian music; it’s always a lot of happiness, energy and a positive vibe.

"So I said we are going to do a Portuguese version. And I met this girl called Salomé De Bahia in Paris—she’s from Brazil, from Bahia. Sometimes we have an idea, so we just try new stuff, hence ‘Meu Carnaval.’”

Album: Made in Jamaica
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “‘I Feel for You’ was all about the sample I made with an original of Marc Cerrone’s ‘Look for Love.’ It was a time when the French stage was huge. It was a very good timing. We just found a way to recycle disco with a different feeling, with filters then with—I don’t know, EQ-ing, I don’t remember what we did, but we did something smart.

“So I did the instrumental in my kid’s room and I went to L.A. to meet Cerrone because at that time he was living in L.A. He said it was the first time that somebody sampled Cerrone and tried to clear it. Actually, his catalog was slipping and he said ‘Wow, you are the first one from France to clear it.’ So it was easy to clear it and he said OK, ‘I have a singer in my team in Los Angeles, so you are welcome to use her.’ So I wrote the lyrics and one of my friends made the melody, we did all that in France and we came to Los Angeles to record it. But once again, it was a pure dance track.”

Album: III
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “‘The Beat Goes On’ was actually for Cerrone after I did “I Feel for You.” He asked me to remix and mix all of his catalogue. I took twenty songs to mix them into a compilation. So I did that and then I met Alan Wisniak and he came with me with an a cappella and this a cappella was ‘The Beat Goes On’ with a singer in Paris, a gospel singer. I had only the a cappella, and I had it in my computer. I do a lot of demos every day since 15 years, and I just put the a cappella on top of one of my songs and I just said, 'Wow! It’s good.' Sometimes it happens like this."

Album: III
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “I did ‘Kiss My Eyes’ with a guy called Alain Wisniak. I met him after I did ‘I Feel for You’ and I met him the same time that I met [Marc] Cerrone. Alain Wisniak was the composer for Cerrone at the end of the '70s. Cerrone had a team in the '70s with Lene Lovich, Alain Wisniak and Raymond Donnez.

"Cerrone was just playing drums and this team created ‘Supernature,’ ‘Give Me Love,’ all those hits. So I use Alain Wisniak. After that Alain Wisniak came to me and said ‘I have a few demos, so if you want to make the sound on it, remix it and we can do something together.’

"So we made 'The Beat Goes On' and then after that 'Kiss My Eyes.' I was thinking about Grace Jones when I did that, actually I wanted to contact her but I was too shy to do it. So, [the] Jamaica [vibe] was already something close to me, you know."

Album: Western Dream
Label: Defected/Tommy Boy/Ministry of Sound Australia

Bob Sinclar: “You know I always create my music with samples, with recycling of sounds. So I heard four chords of an acoustic guitar: I’m not going to tell you the record because I didn’t clear it. [Laughs.] The original was very very slow and I created all these harmonies, all the hooks, the dun dun dun, just the bass-line, the whistling, all the little noises, the beats and everything.

"It was the first time I created an acoustic guitar instrumental so I didn’t know what to do with it. It was a problem for me—this track—because it was not disco, and it was uh… [Gestures far left with hands.]

"After that, it was a strong change in my production. Everybody told me when I released the song, when I had finished the song, ‘You cannot release the song because it’s not your style, it’s more Africanism or Afro-something.’

That day, Bob Marley was in the studio, I swear to God! No, I swear to God he was there.

“So I had this instrumental and then I came to New York to record disco stuff with different singers, but I did during two days some very shit stuff. I was really really depressed after three days of work, then Saturday at 5 pm, the last day after spending already $15,000 just on singers and I had nothing.

"Alain Wisniak knew a girl in New York who knew some singers and at 5pm she said ‘I have a Jamaican singer, maybe he can sing on a disco track.’ I had this track called called ‘Sun is Shining’ remixed by Funkstar Deluxe two years before and I had in mind to do reggae on disco.

“So he [Gary Pine] came in the studio and he started to sing on the disco track and it was not good, because his voice was not high enough. So I said OK, I have this instrumental and because I was obligated to pay him—because when you bring a singer into the studio, you have to pay him—maybe we are going to do a ballad for the other album.

"So I just had the acoustic guitar instrumentals and found two or three words then we work it out together. He wrote during one hour and in the studio he passed behind the microphone and he start to sing the first ‘Why must our children play in the street broken out on fading dreams?’ Then something happened there.

“So we worked together with Alan Wisniak and we found a melody and it has been [was] done in three hours. But that day, Bob Marley was in the studio, I swear to God! No, I swear to God he was there. Because we switched off the lights in the mix cabin and we left the light on top of him when he was singing, and he couldn’t see us.

"So we saw him and he was vibing for three hours and we couldn’t stop him. But we had only words, one verse, some words, and the hook. And that’s it. And then I re-edited everything in my studio in Paris.

“It was a good timing for me to meet this guy Gary Pine. We did two or three songs for the album, but this song was a miracle but at the same time a disaster. For the career of the singer, it’s a miracle and a disaster because it can’t any get bigger."

Album: Western Dream
Label: Defected/Tommy Boy/Ministry of Sound Australia

Bob Sinclar: “‘World Hold On’ is going to stay forever my biggest classic, I think. This song is the right combination between harmonies, the emotion in the harmonies, the message in the song, and the beautiful words founded by Steve Edwards, and the hook. Steve Edwards had done a song with two French guys called Cassius, ‘The Sound of Violence’. [Singing…..”I think I wanna be inside of you when the sun goes down”] I contacted the guys and I said, ‘Do you allow me to do a song with this guys because it was three years before?’ They say ‘Yes.’ So I contact him and send him three songs and I said ‘Try to find some top line on these with words and you come into my studio in Paris and we gonna record these songs.’ He came up with the three songs and I used only one, ‘World Hold On.’

“I played the bass-line with this organ synthesizer. We use this organ as a bass-line, I mean, Night Crawler did it and I also did it because, every time that sound can make a hit. So Kylie Minogue used that in her song ‘Can’t Get it Out of My Head.’ So when I heard that song, I love that song. I said one day I will use that same organ to do another hit, like Robin S. ["Show Me Love"] and all that. So I just add this bass-line and Steve Edwards came into the studio and we fixed the melody together, and he had the words, but it was missing something, it’s missing a musical hook. And it came up from, I don’t know, from in the morning. I was thinking about this during the night, and I came up with it, another whistle, another melody [Similar to ‘Love Generation’]. But in my head I said you can’t do it twice, it will never happen, because it’s always too cliché, too formatted.

“En Francais, in France we say 'telephone,' like hello, hello, I’m coming with something. And even the guy from Defected, all the guys said ‘You can’t do it twice. Its impossible, just leave out the whistle.’ I said ‘I wanted it, just leave it, I love it like this,’ and then it worked. I did it twice, like ‘Oops I did it again.’”

Album: Western Dream
Label: Defected/Tommy Boy/Ministry of Sound Australia

Bob Sinclar: “There is not much to say except I sample a country guitar and I met a guy, Farrell Lemon in London, a singer that sounds like Midnight Oil. I just wanted to sound different; I just wanted to bring different type of sample on the dance floor that’s why I like this culture of sampling coming from the hip hop DJs."

Album: Western Dream
Label: Defected/Tommy Boy/Ministry of Sound Australia

Bob Sinclar: “En Fracais we say des exercice de style. It means to take a huge sample to create a new hit. But what I love when I do that—like what I did with Sean Paul on ‘Tik Tok’—is just to bring this sample into another world. So after going to Jamaica, I met a lot of dancehall singers, I met Dollarman, Dollarman isn’t Jamaican, he is Grenadian. I met him in New York but this Jamaica vibes was around this album, Western Dream.

Dollarman is a good MC. I love the way he writes. Attitude-wise it’s different. This is what I regret a little bit—like, attitude man, attitude. Ego kills artists.

“The little story around it is that I created this rhythm around the hook ['Gonna Make You Sweat'] but I had the rhythm, I had the vocals, I had Dollarman, but I couldn’t find the right energy when the sample was coming. I had a huge energy during the verse but when the chorus was coming I had only the sample but something was missing. I met for the first time this guy call Big Ali in France, he is a MC like Fatman Scoop: he is from Brooklyn actually. And I said ‘Maybe I need him in the studio.’ He came into the studio and he found straight away the right additional hook to give more energy when the sample was coming.

“It became a huge hit. I think with less publishing rights on top of it—because [C&C] took fifty percent of the song compared to ‘Love Generation’ and ‘World Hold On,’ which are an original tracks. I get more money with this track because we did a lot of synchronization. It was a pure dance music track and they play it everywhere at football and basketball arenas, etc. Dollarman is a good MC, I love the way he writes, attitude=wise it’s different. This is what I regret a little bit—like attitude man, attitude. Ego kills artists man; it’s not videos.”

Album: Soundz of Freedom
Label: Tommy Boy

Bob Sinclar: “‘Together’ is the same story as ‘Sound of Freedom’ I try to repeat 'World Hold On.' It was the following of the success."

Album: Soundz of Freedom
Label: Tommy Boy

Bob Sinclar: “I try to repeat 'Rock This Party,' so I took another big dance music hook 'Everybody’s Free' from Rozzalla, and then I took the hook and bring it into the Jamaican world and the soca world, with the same Gary Pine and also Dollarman. When you surf on the success, it’s really hard not to format your style, because people love your sound at that moment. So if they love it, you have to do it the same—people are asking for it, which is the beginning of the end of you as the composer."

Album: Born in 69
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “The original sample is from Kid Creole and the Coconuts, August Darnell is the lead singer of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, and before Kid Creole and the Coconuts, he was in a band called Savannah Band (Singing) “Cherchez La Femme.” I love this guy.

"So I found in one of his album before Kid Creole, just this kids' hook. I try to record the hook with kids because I like to recreate the hook. I tried to redo it in France but the French kids couldn’t do it. It was not on four [beat] to the floor, so it was really hard for a French singer to do it. So I record it in Brazil because Brazilian kids, they [really] know how to sing that song. So I record that.

“I just do instrumental every day in my studio and then I decide what kind of artistic direction I want to put on the song and then I had the idea and because I love hip-hop, I said, ‘Why not’, I had a hook, so I need the rapper, I need an old-school rapper and I met Sugar Hill Gang and I had two of the original band members, Master G. and Wonder Mike on it."

Album: Born in 69
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “Sometimes you have beautiful story to tell about a song but sometimes you are just in the studio and you just want to make some hits. The song was all about the Manu Chao ‘Bongo Bong’ sample, je n’etait plus mon amour.

Shabba Ranks now, he was a pain. He was a pain because it was the first time a singer in front of me say, ‘You have to pay me, you have to pay me and you have to pay me.” But he is a legend to me and an amazing artist.

"[We took] a French hook, plus reggae and add a soca beat. I always try something different; I never do something similar to someone else in my production. That is why I am going always different; It’s just about the vibe of the moment.

"Shabba Ranks now, he was a pain, he was a pain because it was the first time an singer in front of me say, ‘You have to pay me, you have to pay me and you have to pay me.” But he is a legend to me and an amazing artist.

"He was supposed to come on the music video but he never showed up because he said, ‘If you want me to show up, I need twenty thousand dollars.’ So I don’t want in front of the camera to say what kind of words, my response was, but sorry no we don’t have that money, but maybe in the end I have to pay because that is how it works over here [in the United States].”

Album: Disco Crash
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “It happened that that week I did Made in Jamaica and I had a lot of occasion to ask Sean Paul to appear on one of my song but he always said ‘I don’t understand your music.’ because he was born and raised in Jamaica with that rhythm, which is something I can understand. So after three or four years he came in the studio and said ‘Now I’m a bit more relaxed, so if you have something for me I will be very happy to do it.’ So he did it straight-away very very quick. He is very clever in finding the hooks, but I also did it in the same vein. I took a dance rhythm, a nineties dance rhythm to put in my production.”

Album: Made in Jamaica
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “The idea of the song, of the instrumentals; came from a Romanian guy called Custy—crazy guy, he came with the hook. [Sings] ‘I Wanna’—it was very catchy. I didn’t really like the hook, it was very commercial, but it was at a moment where I was a bit, not lost but I was like, ‘Let’s do something very commercial.’ And it usually never works when you do things like this.

"So I took it and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I bring the hook with me to Jamaica and I said ‘OK, let's use that hook [but] produced by Sly and Robbie and let’s do a reggae version of that for the album.’”

“So you have two unreleased [songs], ‘Rainbow of Love’ and ‘I Wanna’ and then you have all the rest [that] are classics rearranged in acoustic reggae. Then I remix ‘I Wanna’ to make it more danceable, more clubby. Nothing more special to say except that Shaggy was really nice and very professional.”

Album: Made in Jamaica
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “I was in Kingston Jamaica at Anchor Studio. My dream was to meet Sly and Robbie—you know? I had that opportunity through my friend Rodney Hill, and to do this album I always wanted to do, which was to do a remix album of all my hits in acoustic Jamaican Reggae. So during the sessions, we did two unreleased tracks. One with Shaggy called ‘I Wanna’ and one with Ben Onono call ‘Rainbow of Life.’ But it became ‘Rainbow of Love’ after that, because first we did only the instrumentals and then the vibe was very, very good so we tried to write something when we were in studio, but it didn’t come out very good. So I sent the instrumentals to Ben Onono, who is actually a Jamaican guy living in London, and he wrote and recorded ‘Rainbow of Life’. And then I did a house remix, a dance remix, to release as a single in Europe as “Rainbow of Love.”

Album: Disco Crash
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “I have a huge collection of disco in Paris from 7 inches to 12 inches to albums and also especially Italian disco from mid '70s to mid '80s. A lot of countries in Europe tried to copy American Disco in their style but Italian disco was really catchy, so I love that Italian disco. I had this 45 with a singer call Raffaella Carra She is an icon in her country because she is a choreographer, she’s a dancer, she’s a TV presenter, a singer and an actress. She was really a gay icon because she was the first to talk about A.I.D.S on TV, She was the first to wear a top and show off her belly on TV but never vulgar.

“On this 7 inch you had this hook and my work is to find hooks in old classics and I found this hook. [Sings Far L-Amore chorus] It was just funny because in Europe, Italy is a huge market for me, maybe I look Italian even though I am not an Italian guy, maybe that why they love me. Anyway I love this hook, so I said ‘Let’s try something’ but I did a bootleg first with the sample and I created the production on top. I played it in Italy and I saw the reaction in Italy, the reaction on the dance floor was mad. So I said, ‘The only way for me to be original in making this song-because it was a classic in 76-is to re-record it with the singer, because It’s going to be funny because she is 67 years old.’ So I had to find her and she said, ‘I love your style, I love your vibe, we’re going do it.’ I went to Rome just to record her parts and I reproduced everything in studio in Paris, I doubled her voice because her voice was not the same, you can imagine. She did the song when she was 28 years old, so after 35 years it was different. So I re –create the sample and we did some promotion with her, pictures, TV shows. It was good because Italians are very sensitive about their (Icons) tradition. So they love her and it was an honor to see what I did with their (Icon) tradition.”

Album: Disco Crash
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “‘Rock the Boat’ is a pure dance track I created like ‘Rock this Party.’ Nothing special behind that, you know. Just a part of making the people dance on the dance floor all around the world. So I had this big hook of music with the beat, so I said, ‘OK, it is now very trendy to add some hip-hop artists and also a girl singing the song.’ So I added Pitbull, I met him in 2006 when I released "World Hold On" in Florida. He did an intro on that song, so that’s how I met him. And then he came up on it, and then also with Dragonfly, she’s an American artist, so she’s singing the song also. So it was just a pure dance track."

Album: Disco Crash
Label: Yellow Productions

Bob Sinclar: “At a period of time I arrived after this excitement of ‘Love Generation’ ‘World Hold On,’ ‘Rock this Party,’ ‘Sound of Freedom,’ and ‘Together.’ I had three years of an amazing moment of mash-ups, the bridge between Jamaica and Europe, I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. It was this Jamaican feeling of all the songs, but after awhile it started to disappear because a lot of DJ’s started to copy the style, and when everybody copy the same style, that style disappears. I don’t want to use the same formula when I am doing things so I try to update always the sound. Maybe today to come back to disco, always to do some club tracks, DJ orientated; because the young generation wants energy, straight energy. So I do things with Gilbere Forte and Sophie-Ellis Bextor, I try to explore different roads to come back and to find something new. I don’t want to look at behind me; I want to look forward to see what’s going to happen next.

“The guitar loop is from Vengeance. It’s a sample CD, and I took the guitar and I play the bassline, I said ‘Wow! It sounds good.’ Then I played the hook and said ‘Hmm, here’s something.’ Then I met a girl [Vivian Kinda Kee Hamid] who’s doing melodies for Lady Gaga and everything, who’s working for this producer called Red One and they work as a team. So I met the girl and she did two melodies, one for “Rock the Boat” and one for ‘Fuck With You.’ I need top-line artists sometimes, because I’m not very good in melodies, I’m a good producer but not a very good top liner. So she wrote that then, nothing else to say.”