The Mighty Bop

Chris the French Kiss, otherwise known as Christophe le Friant, serves as the Parisian DJ and founder of Yellow Productions who shaped the Mighty Bop’s downtempo hip-hop output, Bob Sinclar’s house recordings, and the acid-jazz material credited to Réminiscence Quartet. He launched his DJ career in 1987 while still a teenager and established Yellow Productions with Alain Ho in 1993. Early catalog items issued under his own hand included the Mighty Bop’s “Messe Pour le Temps Present,” Réminiscence Quartet’s “Roda Mundo,” and his debut full-length, the French hip-hop summit The Mighty Bop Meet DJ Cam et la Funk Mob. Yellow’s roster also spotlighted fellow French talents such as DJ companions Dimitri from Paris and Kid Loco while showcasing two further Mighty Bop albums, La Vague Sensorielles and Autres Voix, Autres Blues, between 1996 and 1997.

Intent on bringing levity to the rising French house scene, le Friant adopted the Bob Sinclar moniker from a character in the well-known French film Le Magnifique and delivered the first Sinclar EP, A Space Funk Project, in 1997. He soon completed an entire Bob Sinclar album, Paradise, which Yellow placed in stores during summer 1998. One track, “Gym Tonic,” gained French club traction through its buoyant house groove and repetitive singalong hook taken from a Jane Fonda workout record. Though the cut became an Ibiza anthem that summer and appeared poised for chart success, Fonda pursued legal measures over the unauthorized sample. Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, who had recently issued his own buoyant house track Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better with You” and served as co-producer, declined to authorize even a remixed single, apparently wary of excessive mainstream exposure. Bootlegs nevertheless proliferated, and by October a mysterious act called Spacedust—widely viewed as a major-label cash-in—reached the summit of the British charts with a nearly identical rework titled “Gym and Tonic.” Another Spacedust maneuver, a thinly veiled cover of Bangalter’s solo hit called “Music Feels Good with You,” sank without trace.

Once the disputed samples were excised, Paradise received a worldwide reissue in 1999. Le Friant also supplied additional production for remixes of material by Bangalter himself, Ian Pooley, Second Crusade, and the Yellow-associated project Tom & Joyce. Returning to the Mighty Bop name in 2000, he assembled the retrospective mix collection Spin My Hits. That same year he issued his first American Sinclar album, Champs Elysées, via Subliminal Records. The 2001 project Cerrone by Bob Sinclar presented his selections from the catalog of one of his chief inspirations, Cerrone. Following the 2005 dance-chart ascent of the single “Love Generation,” he unveiled the full-length Western Dream in 2006.