Songfacts®:

• One of the great hip-hop party jams of the '90s, "The Choice Is Yours" gets its energy from an array of obscure samples pieced together by William "Mista Lawnge" McLean, the producer in the duo, and the high-adrenaline flow of Andres "Dres" Titus, Black Sheep's rapper. The pair went to school together in Sanford, North Carolina, then reconnected when they met up by chance in New York City, where Lawnge was under the wing of DJ Red Alert, a major player on the scene. Thanks to Red Alert, they connected with De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and Jungle Brothers, becoming part of their Native Tongues collective. "The Choice Is Yours" is from their debut album, A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing, which they made in the same studios where these other groups worked. This let them bounce ideas around and keep their creative juices flowing.
• The "choice" is between positivity and negative influences. If you can get with this, you're on board with what Black Sheep has to offer: meaningful music and a good time. If you can get with that, well, you're on your own.
• The "Engine Engine Number 9" bit comes from a schoolyard chant that was part of a game Dres played as a kid. "When we were kids playing tag, everybody would put their shoe in and you go around chanting, 'Engine, engine, number nine, going down Chicago line. If my train goes off the track, do you want your money back?' he explained to Passion Of The Weiss. "I felt like everybody played that, and everybody in the world is going to relate to it."
  
  This bit also shows up in the 1970 Wilson Pickett song "Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9," where he sings:
  
  Engine, engine number 9
  Can you get me back on time?
• The video was directed by Charles Stone III, who did the famous Budweiser "Wassup" commercials. It's a landmark rap video with a concept that serves the song. As images of drugs, minstrelsy, and all things wack appear, they crumple up and get pulled away by the members of Black Sheep.
• The song opens with a sample of Ron Carter's upright bass from a 1975 instrumental called "Impressions" by the jazz musician McCoy Tyner, a cover of a song by John Coltrane. Mista Lawnge had to dig deep to find it. Not only was Tyner's "Impressions" a rather obscure recording, but the bass riff doesn't appear until three minutes in, and it comes out of nowhere, seemingly improvised and also isolated, making it easy to loop.
  
  This bass run also shows up in the famous "Engine Engine Number 9" breakdown to "The Choice Is Yours" - it's a key component to the song and very distinctive.
• On the dance floor, everyone would get low when the "Engine Engine Number 9" part around, then explode when Dres launched into the line, "Back on the scene!" This is demonstrated this in the video, the same way Naughty By Nature taught us to throw our hands up during "Hip Hop Hooray," also released in 1991.
  
  This move of going down to the floor and popping up in ecstacy is rooted in "Shout," a 1959 song by The Isley Brothers. You can see it demonstrated at the toga party in the movie Animal House.
• The famous version of this song is a remix officially titled "The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)" that was released on the A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing album along with the original (the "revisited" version is Track 21; the original is Track 7). The original doesn't have the "Impressions" bass sample or the "Engine Engine Number 9" breakdown. And Dres' lyrics and vocals are different.
  
  The A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing album uses about 40 samples that took nearly a year to clear. This hold-up ended up being a blessing in disguise because Mista Lawnge used that time to do the remix, and when Dres added his new vocals, he was a much more confident rapper. The "Revisited" version is the one released as a single.
• The "ooh... come on" vocals that play throughout the song come from a 1970 song called "I'll Say It Again" by Sweet Linda Divine. This is another sample that's on the remix but not the original.