In 1988, the Wee Papa Girl Rappers really wanted to heat things up. But did Wee really rule?
London born twins Sandra and Samantha Lawrence (b.1967) had been singing since they are very small and started their professional career as backing singers for Feargal Sharkey no less! They were signed on their own merits to Jive Records in 1987 and released their debut single, “Rock The Clock”, that same year. The song never did anything while its follow up, “Faith”, only scrapped into the UK top 100. Taking their name from their father’s often spoken “Oui Papa” in his native French Creole language from Saint Lucia, the girls were asked to provide vocals on producers 2 Men and A Drum Machine’s track, “Heat It Up”, and finally they won a top 40 hit.
The song climbed steadily to No.21 in the late Spring of 1988 and the girls found themselves on Top Of The Pops. September would bring their biggest and most famous song of all, “Wee Rule”. They really did rule the dance for two months when the song hit the top ten in over a dozen countries and landed at No.6 in the UK. This was followed by their debut album, “The Beat, The Rhyme, The Noise” while 1988 closed with the song “Soulmate”, which missed the UK chart. After a fifth single, “Blow The House Down” (perhaps on top of the Living In A Box comeback single of the same name) flopped, the Wee Papa’s took time out to begin writing their next batch of material.
Their second album, “Be Aware”, followed soon after in 1990, although this and the three singles, “Get In The Groove”, “Best Of My Love” and “The Bump” all failed to chart. Sandra (known as Total S) and Samantha (self-titled TY Tim) underwent a rebranding of a kind in 1992 for their comeback, now simply The Wee Papas. It didn’t do much to help the cause as both “Wee Are The Girls” and “Wherever You Go” found no audience whatsoever and both Sandra and Samantha called it a day in 1994. From time to time, they pop up on 80’s music shows and came out of hiding for the Top Of The Pops review of 1988 in 2019. To date, there are no plans to ‘rule’ the world or the dance once more. So much for that!
The official Wee Papa Girls TWITTER has not been updated for many years sadly
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