This song's bass line is sampled from Betty Wright's "Tonight is the Night," which chronicles a young woman's very first "intimate encounter" with a man. In that song, which was recorded during a live performance, Ms. Wright is heard telling her audience the story of how she came to write the song, and how her mother did not exactly approve of her performing it in public. According to Ms. Wright, her mother, properly mortified by the song's subject matter, righteously exclaimed, "I KNOW you're not gonna sing THAT song!" That line ("I KNOW you're not gonna sing THAT song.") can be heard throughout "I Wanna Sex You Up."
This was the debut single for both the group and the record label, Giant Records. It was a huge hit, but it did offend the sensibilities of some listeners. At a few radio stations, they referred to the song as "I Wanna Love You Up."
This was written for the 1991 movie New Jack City starring Wesley Snipes and Ice-T. When they were looking for songs for the film, the producers wanted the modern R&B sound - "New Jack Swing" - that artists like Bobby Brown and Jodi Watley were using. To get it, they contacted the producer/songwriter Elliott Straite (knows as "Dr. Freeze"), who had written the Bell Biv Devoe hit "Poison." They showed him the film and let him pick a scene to soundtrack; he chose one where the character Uniqua (Tracy Camilla Johns) does a striptease for Nino, the kingpin played by Snipes. He wrote this sexy song specifically for the scene.
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