Black Oxygen’s David Lyle on how Crazy Town’s Shifty Shellshock helped bring the band to a new level

Black Oxygen. // photo courtesy the artist

On Monday, June 24, Shifty Shellshock, frontman and cofounder of Crazy Town, passed away at the age of 49. Despite many trials and travails over the course of the musician’s short life, he made a mark with Crazy Town’s “Butterfly”—their 2000 single which was a massive worldwide success.

At the beginning of this year, former Kansas City and now Los Angeles-based hip hop/pop duo Black Oxygen teamed up with Shifty Shellshock to release “Butterfly (New Anthem),” which saw the duo of David and Nick Lyle partner with the Crazy Town frontman to reimagine the nearly 25 year-old hit, after having previously collaborated on 2019’s “Burning Into the Night.”

The viral success of that video led to the band being signed by Warner Music Group, through which they released their latest album, Last Ones Standing, at the beginning of May. When we spoke with the brothers a few weeks back, David Lyle told us how integral Shifty Shellshock was to the band’s recent success.

David Lyle: “It came about when we were performing at the Whiskey a Go Go, and Shifty had seen our set. He happened to be there, and after we were done, I was just hanging out, and he’s like, ‘Hey man, I enjoyed your guys set. Just take down my number, man. We should do something together.’

So I got his number and texted him, and he was like, ‘Hey, we’re doing this tour in Canada in like a couple of months, and I want you guys to come direct support.’ He said, I got, you know, all the, the pay workout.

It worked out good. He brought us out on this tour across Canada and we’ve played almost everywhere in the U.S. at this point but haven’t played out of the country. Because of him, we got to do that and I appreciate that. He just feels like we’re little brothers to him.

He had brought us out, and after that, we became friends. He saw that we had songs of our own that were reaching the top of the Billboard chart, and he had hit me up.

At the time, I started a podcast called Inspiration. He came on the podcast first, and he teases it at the end about ‘Butterfly.’

He has shared stories as a friend that he’s one of these guys [where] it’s not about money. He goes on his gut and vibe and he had offers from many labels offering him hundreds of thousands of dollars to redo ‘Butterfly’ because now people would just want to make money on the remakes, but he never really he never gave it up.

I’ll never forget when we were hanging out after getting some food at this time, but he said, ‘Hey, man, I’ve been asked for a long time, but I’ve watched you guys now for three years’ — and he did really get emotional — but he’s like, the one thing God has blessed him with in life was ‘Butterfly’ and he knows that that’s his one-hit wonder.

He’s had many hits, but he knows that that’s the biggest hit that was brought to him. He knows still to this day, he could play anywhere in the world and get live off that song for the rest of his life.

So he’s like, ‘I’d like to pass that down to you guys. I’ll even just hop in the video. Let’s just do it as friends,’ and I was like, ‘Absolutely. That would be an honor.’

To be a part of history like that, even in moving forward in our career? We’re going to the UK to play in a few months and Warner’s having this headline festival over there and sure, we have our own hits, but when you have something like that to throw in the set, pretty much you could throw a rock and eight out of ten people, they’re going to know ‘Come my lady, come, come my lady.’ Do you know what I’m saying? Everyone just knows the words.

So that’s how that came about.

Even on the video, he’s like, ‘I want to make sure there’s one jungle room scene,’ because it was in the original video that had like half a billion views or whatever. So, that’s how that came about, and in three or four weeks, it got over three million views, and then I was really thankful.

You know, we’re working hard now for a minute and sacrificing. We’ve been through different managers who have helped invest in our career, and people have laid their lives on the line for us. It’s been a journey to stay positive, and then all of a sudden, Universal Records, Sony, all these labels, and Warner Brothers, they started reaching out to us and saying, ‘Hey, we’d like to set up some meetings. What are you guys working on? We’d like to look at signing you guys.’

When climbing up the mountain, you gotta stay positive on your path, right? When you’re following a dream and a goal, you may be the only one who sees it. It can be a road of darkness, but we all know when there’s success, that’s when everyone comes to the table, right? But once that happened, that was a really big release off the shoulders because I couldn’t go to my grave and know that I didn’t accomplish that.”