“Clown Prince” by Hilltop Hoods

"Clown Prince" fired the opening shot for The Hard Road, the Hilltop Hoods' fourth album, hitting the streets on Obese Records in January 2006 as its first single, and it broke new ground for the Australian hip-hop crew: it was their first song to make the ARIA Singles Chart, where it peaked at 30. Matt Lambert and Daniel Smith wrote it, and DJ Debris produced it and cut it up on the turntables.

The groove rides a bassline sampled from Pornosonic's "Laying Pipe", music that had already done duty in an adult film, with vocal snippets from the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Things Done Changed" and A Tribe Called Quest's "Excursions" stitched in. A year later it came back in formal wear, remixed with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra for The Hard Road: Restrung.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.