During the eighties, disco was a very important music-style in Holland. Producers like Stock, Aitken & Waterman made hit after hit over here. But in the late eighties this style began to lose interest, and other styles became popular. These styles weren’t successful everywhere, some, like hiphop, became popular in America, others, like dance, in Europe. Hiphop wasn’t very successful in Holland, over here there were just a few HipHop songs who made it into the charts.
A much more popular style was eurodance, which got large influences from the hiphop. And sometimes there were hiphop versions of dance songs like a hiphop version of "I Cant Stand It". Groups with a lot of influence in the Eurodance were Mars ("Pump Up The Volume"), Technotronic ("This Beat is Technotronic") and C&C Music Factory.
In the year 1989 the Dutch producer Ruud van Reijen created Twenty 4 Seven. This became something totally new: a female singer, doing the "angelic refrain" together with a male rapper. This combination together with a very happy sound, a melody, you can’t get rid off, became very popular in the Netherlands and beyond.
Nance Coolen had been chosen to be the female singer and Captain Hollywood became the rapper. They, together with Hanks & Jacks, who did the male backing vocals, made a song called "I Can’t Stand It", which became very popular in the disco’s & clubs in Holland & beyond. But the song entered the charts very carefully, and didn’t reach that high.
After "I Can’t Stand It" Twenty 4 Seven released "Are You Dreamin’" around Christmas 1989 and so in 1990 they released the album "Street Moves".
At the end of 1991, Captain Hollywood had a little argue with Ruud van Reijen and left the band. After this he created the Captain Hollywood Project, a band like Twenty 4 Seven, Hollywood being a rapper and some female singer for the refrain. Only his project constantly changed people, several female singers joined & left his band.
During this time Captain Hollywood became more popular than Twenty 4 Seven. Hits like "More & More", "Only With You" became popular in whole Europe. Twenty 4 Seven seemed to be fallen asleep.
After Captain Hollywood left, things became really quiet around Twenty 4 Seven. Things were that quiet that Nance decided to take a job at a local supermarket. Can you imagine shopping in a store while Nance is sitting behind the counter??? But producer Ruud van Reijen wasn’t planning to stop. He asked Nance to join the group again, and asked if she knew someone instead of Captain Hollywood. That’s were Stay-C enters the scene, Nance knew Stay-C from some concerts, were they both performed, Nance asked Stay-C. He was positive about it and joined the group. The first song they recorded together was "It Could Have Been You". But this song didn’t become a hit at all.
During these years Eurodance became really popular. Bands like 2 Unlimited (same concept, female singer, male rapper), Captain Hollywood, Double You (Cover of KC & The Sunshineband), Def James Dope reached higher and higher in the charts.
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