What happens in Baltimore doesn’t stay in Baltimore — it sometimes rockets around the world and ends up fueling the pulsating soundtrack of an advertisement for a popular sports drink in the U.K.
That’s how powerful Baltimore Club music has been and continues to be as more and more people discover the hypnotic beats of a sound created and curated in Charm City.
Baltimore-based music producer Mighty Mark said Lucozade, a top-selling energy beverage in the United Kingdom, reached out to him about using “Roll Call,” a song he produced and wrote with choreographer and performer Terry Wedington that also features vocals by TT the Artist.
“Roll Call” was a main feature for the soundtrack of “Dark City Beneath the Beat,” a Netflix documentary by TT the Artist that chronicles Baltimore Club music scene.
“They loved the energy within the track, and they wanted to use it for their new ad,” Mighty Mark said Thursday in a phone interview.
A U.K. artist resynced the vocals, but otherwise, the beat is all Baltimore.
“It’s a real big ad. It’s playing all over TV,” he said, adding that local news anchor Denise Koch saw the commercial while on vacation and shared it on social media.
Mighty Mark (born Marquis Gasque in Cherry Hill) said every 10 to 15 years, it seems Baltimore Club gets a rebirth and goes mainstream, noting tracks by Kanye West and Lil Jon. But he said that recently, the music is seeing a resurgence but this time, not in clubs but online.
“Now with TikTok being a hot thing … it’s on the internet with the dancers dancing to it. Dancers at the Ravens game, dancers at the Orioles game,” he said. “Baltimore Club music being used in an ad overseas just shows how universal that sound is, that energy is.”
Mighty Mark notes the commercial even keeps references to Cherry Hill, the Baltimore neighborhood and housing project.
In the song, “Terry is talking about ‘Let me see you do the Cherry Hill,’ but do they really know about Cherry Hill projects? Probably not,” he said. “But just the energy, the inflections and arrangement, the authenticity of the sound, I think travels outside of Baltimore.”
