Because of the way that the modern internet is shaped by algorithms, the pattern seeking part of my brain is interested in perceived microgenres of disparate content connected by one static element. An interesting artistic movement of this type that has been delivered through the medium of Youtube recommended videos, is the Mario 64 Soundfont Cover. Songs by Radiohead, Aphex Twin or Nine Inch Nails recreated with the MIDI instruments used in Mario 64's OST. The works that have received the most notoriety and discussion are all from the same creator, Youtube user on4word, with their work having received articles and blog posts written about them and recognition from members of Radiohead, but it would be incorrect to assume this to be an entirely solo movement, as other projects like a recreation of Have a Nice Life's Deathconsciousness or Super Spamton 64 have also picked up an amount of notability as well displaying a clear amount of love and craftsmanship.
There's a lot that can be said about these songs. The interplay of nostalgia, the familiar sounds of Mario 64 depicting the emotionally heady work of Radiohead, the juxtaposition between the sweeping ambiance of Aphex Twin with the often goofy instruments of Mario 64 (love that Pan Flute). The recreation of the guitar driven melodies of Nine Inch Nails or Have A Nice Life reinterpreted as Boss Fight themes for Bowser. A perfect intersection of the joy of childhood with the emotional turbulence of adolescence.
But I don't want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about the one-hit wonder Skee-Lo, and his failed follow up single.
Even if you are not familiar with Antoine Roundtree, better known by his stage name of Skee-Lo, it's highly likely you have heard his 1995 chart topping single, "I Wish". An international smash hit, I Wish resonated with its self-deprecating nature and lack of explicit lyrics at a time when moral outrage regarding the effects of gangsta rap and its culture was affecting the children was at an all time high. The relatability of the song was key to its success, after all, who amongst us does not wish to be a little bit taller, or to be a baller, or to have a girl who would look good and to call her?
Like all one hit wonders though, Skee-Lo had a much bigger obstacle in his life than his lack of having a rabbit in a hat and a bat and a 64 Impala, and that was the dreaded Follow Up Single. The Follow Up Single is what separates One Hit Wonders from genuine Pop Stars after all, and Skee-Lo placed all of his money on a train, a train helmed by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

I'm sure in the 90s this seemed like a good idea.
1995's Money Train is a buddy action comedy in the vein of Lethal Weapon or Bad Boys, featuring Snipes and Harrelson reuniting from their previous pairing in 1992's White Men Can't Jump. I will not lie to you dear reader, I have not seen Money Train. It's on a list of bad but fun movies to watch curated by my dear friend Joe, so at some point I will eventually have seen it. But that time is not now. Right now, all I can tell you about is how Money Train was not a critical or commercial success, and Skee-Lo's second single was a promotional single for Money Train, titled Top of the Stairs.
Top of the Stairs begins with a somewhat ominous arpeggio with a few stabs of synth that then gives way to a ridiculously funky bassline. The music video features Skee-Lo awkwardly greenscreened into scenes from Money Train and honestly it's an enjoyable little video, if very distinctly "A Music Video for a movie tie-in". (They include a few shots of Wesley Snipes and Jennifer Lopez making love, can you show that on MTV? Is that allowed?) Lyrically, Top of the Stairs consists of Skee-Lo positioning himself as a big brother to the listener, telling them a cautionary tale of the perils of fame, and how no one cares about you until you are Somebody. Skee-Lo isn't exactly breaking new ground here, the haters and the fakers are perennial subject matter for the world of hip hop, but honestly Skee-Lo is a good enough storyteller to sell it.
As already mentioned, Money Train did not do very well, and Top of the Stairs largely followed in its footsteps. Top of the Stairs did fairly well on the charts in Europe but failed to gain traction in America, and thus within the anglocentric sphere of the internet, it was doomed to half remembered obscurity. Skee-Lo's debut album, also titled I Wish, sold quite well, snagging a Gold Certification, but things did not work out for Skee-Lo. Quietly retiring 5 months after the launch of his album, he says the record label stiffed him out of paying him anything at the height of the records popularity, he didn't receive a cent of the profits. "So I refused to shoot any more videos, promote or record music. I'm not their slave. I wasn't working for free." he said in a 2012 interview with LA Weekly. The man was done.
On August 10th 2016, 21 years after the singles original release, Top of the Stairs got a second life, through a SiivaGunner upload going by the name of "Looping Steps - Super Mario 64".
If you aren't familiar with the Youtube channel SiivaGunner, the history here is far too vast and outside the scope of this blogpost, but to put it simply it is a collaborative music project using a Youtube channel mimicking the (sadly now defunct) legendary VGM channel, GilvaSunner. On Siivagunner, songs that claim to be classic video game tracks are instead remixes, mash-ups or auditory jokes based on the song in-question.
The "joke" of this particular track, (referred to from this point on as Top of the Looping Steps, the name it was given on the compilation album GiivaSunner's Highest Quality Video Game Rips: Volume 7) is one that is fairly easy to parse on the surface. Looping Steps in Mario 64 is the track that plays as Mario attempts to climb the endless staircase in Peach's castle, and Top of the Stairs is similarly a song about Skee-Lo attempting to climb a metaphorical set of stairs. Pretty simple stuff. But there is a little bit more going on here musically.
The original Looping Steps from Mario 64 is a very simple but effective composition. The main element at play is an auditory illusion known as a Shepard tone, where a scale plays and seemingly increases in pitch infinitely, no matter how long the listener hears it. The actual song here is not particularly long, lasting about 30 seconds, but the eerie nature of the track's never ending ascent as you feebly attempt to run up an endless staircase is an especially unnerving experience. Top of the Looping Steps recreates the ominous staccato arpeggio from the Skee-Lo track with the instrumental arrangement of Looping Steps. As we move past the intro and get into the main verses of the song, the instrumental of the original that was masterfully sampled from Patrice Rushen's Remind Me gets lavishly recreated with a suite of virtual instruments and motifs from across the entire Mario 64 soundtrack. You can hear the love and respect for the original art on display, and there is a distinctly sombre nature that lies underneath the whole affair.
This is what I think makes Top of the Looping Steps a masterpiece. There is an inherent sadness in Skee-Lo's lyrics that was hidden by that funky bassline of the original. Stripped away from the bravado of a cheesy Snipes/Harrelson action movie, the expertly choreographed break-dancers, and the overly ambitious for 1995 green screen effects, there is a real vulnerability at play here. The lyrics are distinctly far more real in 2016 than they were in 1995. In 1995, Skee-Lo was the guy on the top of the stairs. Everybody knew I Wish. But today, we know how the story ends. We know he ends up back at the bottom of the stairs again, hurt by an awful music industry that has shown repeatedly how little it cares for the artists that craft it, being remembered with an amount of derision and/or mockery, as most "One Hit Wonders" are, Skee-Lo has experienced it all.
At this time of writing, the official Youtube upload for Top of the Stairs has around 600k views. Not a small number by any stretch, but a significant far cry from the 31 million views of I Wish. Top of the Looping Steps has 400k views, a mere 200k away from the original song it was based on. It is not a stretch to assume there are some people out there who have listened to this Mario 64 remix who are totally unfamiliar with the original. It is roughly as popular as the original after all.
The Mario 64 cover trend might be a little silly, but there is a certain power in the sounds of these MIDI arrangements, whether observed through the lens of nostalgia or just as these totally artificial recreations of instruments that are so far removed from what the real sounds they are mimicking are like that they end up taking a unique quality all their own, something distinctly digital, yet unmistakably human. The thumbprint of Koji Kondo attempting to make a pan flute convincingly come through the speakers of your TV. And now, it's also the sound of Skee-Lo endlessly attempting to run up those stairs.
Most importantly you better remember,
The little guy you step on to get on top
Is the same guy you gonna run into going back down
