To tell you the truth, I more or less picked this as my Record of the Year for 2016 quite early on in 2016. Initially after hearing about the big comeback of Craig David I thought I'd give this a listen. At the same time my yearly chart reviews had just begun and I was conscious that I'd have to pick a record for the more recent years where I knew very little of the music getting into the charts. Every time I listened to a new chart hit in 2016 I asked myself the question "is it better than this?" to which the answer was always no.
Craig David of course made a name for himself back in 1999 as vocalist on "Re-Rewind The Crowd Say Bo Selecta" by the Artful Dodger, though some thought he was the Artful Dodger. This was also the record which taught the mainstream public what UK Garage was.
His solo chart career began with a UK Garage record, "Fill Me In", but after that none of his solo singles were actually UK Garage. I did like a few of his singles that followed, but found certainly once he came back with his second album that his music suffered from what I call "British R&B Syndrome". Generally speaking, the British can't do R&B nearly as well as the Americans can and a lot of British R&B ends up sounding like the poundland version of it's American counterpart. There are some exceptions, but Craig David wasn't one of them.
By 2008 his chart career looked to be finished until he made his successful comeback with this record 8 years later.
In my opinion, the reason why this comeback was so successful was because he finally made another UK Garage record. It was UK Garage that made him a household name in the first place, but given the lack of UK Garage he made after his initial breakthrough, you could say this is the record that people had been waiting 16 years for him to make.
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