The best decision Knock2 made was leaving Flowdan alone. That grime bark is the whole gravity of BADDADAN, and rather than burying it under his own production, Knock2 lets it run the room and builds everything else to serve it. Chase & Status already made this a jungle monster on the original. The remix knows exactly why it worked.
Underneath the vocals, the jungle breaks are still doing the running, that chopped-up snare pattern that made the first version feel like it was sprinting flat out. Knock2’s whole move is weight. He drops the low end lower and meaner, so when the beat caves back in after the chant it lands like a heavier animal than before. This is a rail-clearer, the kind of drop that starts a pit whether the room planned on one or not. That first flip is the one that gets me.
BADDADAN came out of the Chase & Status camp with a full crew on the mic, Bou, Irah, Trigga, Flowdan and Takura all trading bars, which is a lot of record to hand a remixer. Knock2 lives at the harder end of bass music, so turning him loose on something from the Chase & Status catalog was always going to get physical.
The win is that it never turns into a Knock2 track with a sample bolted on. It stays BADDADAN. The bones are the same, the muscle is just heavier.
Listen on: YouTube · YouTube Music
