Madonna performed this at the 2001 Grammys to open the show. She came out in a limo that was "driven" by underage rapper Lil' Bow Wow.
The video is a parody of rap videos. It shows Madonna cruising around in the back of a limo going to clubs and enjoying the spoils of success. The limo driver was played by Sacha Baron Cohen in character as Ali G, a British comedian who acts like a gangsta rapper and interviews various politicians and dignitaries with ridiculous questions.
He had a popular TV show in England at the time, but wasn't known in the US until 2003, when HBO gave him a show in the States. He once asked a drug enforcement officer why they don't give the drugs they seize to charity, and asked a prominent lawyer when it's OK to kill someone.
Madonna was very pregnant with her son Rocco while filming the video for this song, so she tried to keep it hidden by swaddling herself in large fur coats. The animated section of the video was put in as it was too difficult to film in live action.
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Suggestion credit:
Adam - Dewsbury, England
On her 2001 Drowned World Tour, a video screen showed shots of Madonna's previous personas as she performed this. She played almost entirely new songs on the tour; this was the only time she showed clips of her past.
Near the peak of Napster's popularity as a free music repository, an unfinished version of this song was leaked on the Internet a few months before its release date. The subsequent publicity turned many artists against Napster, as it was becoming more and more common for unreleased tracks to appear on the service. Instead of forming partnerships with Napster, many of these artists decided to join lawsuits against them, and Napster was shut down as a free service in July 2001.
Madonna performed this on her 2006 Confessions Tour as a mash-up with The Tramps' "
Disco Inferno ," wearing a white suit similar to the one worn by John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever which was also the main inspiration for the roller skate choreography.
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Suggestion credit:
Marek - Odense, Denmark
At the beginning of February 2012, this was the most played Madonna song on American radio in the Nielsen BDS era. The song had clocked up 308,000 plays from the advent of BDS data in 1991.
The Music album marks an explosive period in Madonna's life. The singer explained to Billboard magazine: "Everything in life moves in cycles... there's a period where you're quiet, and there's a period where you explode. In the time leading up to Ray of Light, I was in a quiet space - making lots of discoveries and going through lots of changes. It was an introspective, questioning time. Then, almost without warning, I felt like I needed to explode. I didn't feel the need to be so introspective. I felt like dancing. And that's reflected in these songs."
Madonna turned to a new producer (and co-writer) for this album. French musician Mirwais Ahmadzai was the former guitarist for Taxi Girl, an influential French pop band with ties to punk, disco and techno, and the perfect candidate to bring a unique energy to the album. But the partnership was almost over before it began as each only spoke a little of each other's language. With the help of a translator, things began running more smoothly, and ended with Madonna calling his work "the future of sound."
When the earlier mix of this song hit the Internet before the official release date, some fans accused Madonna of leaking it herself. She replied: "Oh, please! If I was going to leak my record, I would've put a better mix of it out there. I practically had a nervous breakdown when the track got out there. I wasn't even finished with the record when it happened ... I don't want my whole album to be leaked. I don't care if you're my 83-year-old grandmother, you're not getting my record before I'm ready for you to have it."
Beginning the week of September 16, 2000, this song began its four-week streak at #1.
