"Blending up-tempo jazz music with a hip-hop flair, London ‘90s band Us3 blew through the mainstream with funky jazz-rap tunes, mostly consisting of stitched-together classic recordings. Most famous for turning the Herbie Hancock song ""Cantaloupe Island"" into a jazzed-out rap version entitled ""Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia),"" Us3 continued truckin' through the decades with other samples and original music, touring the globe and earning top spots on the Billboard charts.Created from the collaboration of mastermind and jazz writer Geoff Wilkinson and jingle-writer/keyboardist Mel Simpson, Us3 became an entity in the early 1990s when the two started producing music together. ""Where Will We Be in the 21st Century?,"" Us3's first independently-released single, led the way for the eclectic band's success to follow, and in 1992 the song ""The Band That Played the Boogie"" garnered enough fame to catch the attention of Capital Records, whose Blue Note label granted Simpson and Wilkinson the right to sample anything from their catalog. Gaining this monumental access, the musical duo hired musicians/rappers Kobie Powell, Rahsaan Kelly and Tukka Yoot, resulting in the smash single ""Cantaloop"" in 1994. Earning incredible amounts of fame for the hit single and the album Hand on the Torch, Us3 next continued establishing their ever-growing fan base by touring the globe, namely Japan and Europe.Named Jazz Musicians of the Year by Britain's The Independent and earning Album of the Year recognition for Hand on the Torch from Japan's Swing Journal, Us3 took their jazz-rap act to the extreme, releasing the 1997 album Broadway & 52 before bringing in the millennium with albums like 2005's Questions and 2007's Say What!? Coming into the 2000s, Us3 had lost many band members (including Simpson), but the hip jazz-rap ensemble is still going strong, pumping out hit after jazz-inspired hit."