[2] Derek Birkett, the owner of One Little Indian, was under the impression that 4AD were trying to poach his band, and, along with label designer Paul White and Einar Örn Benediktsson from the Sugarcubes, visited the 4AD offices in Alma Road to confront Watts-Russell.

[citation needed] The two tracks were released to United Kingdom dance clubs in July 1987, on an anonymous white label with no artist credit.

It entered the UK Singles Chart the following week at number 35, a strong initial showing for an unknown act, especially with 12" sales.

With "Pump Up the Volume" standing at number two, an injunction was obtained against it by pop music producers Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), who objected to the use of a sample from their hit single "Roadblock".

The offending article consisted of seven seconds of an anonymous background voice moaning the single word "hey", involved no musical or melodic information and could never be considered plagiarism in the literary sense.

SAW member Pete Waterman wrote an open letter to the music press calling such things "wholesale theft".

Some publications were quick to point out that Waterman was currently using the bassline from the Colonel Abrams song "Trapped" in his production of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", which was competing in close proximity to "Pump Up the Volume" in the pop charts.

Despite all this, "Pump Up the Volume" went on to spend two weeks at number one in October 1987 and was a chart hit in many other countries, receiving considerable airplay on American, Australian and European airwaves.

While the offending "Roadblock" sample was stripped from the official American release, the version containing it reached the Australian charts.

& Rakim's "Paid in Full", which had been released prior to the M|A|R|R|S track, also hit the top 20 in November, and both singles borrowed heavily from Coldcut's previous UK chart success "Say Kids What Time Is It?".

by Simon Harris, "Theme from S-Express" by S'Express and "Doctorin' the House" by Coldcut featuring Yazz and the Plastic Population.

Litigation would also play its part, and the adage "Where there's a hit — there's a writ" was coined as both house and hip hop artists underwent a period of legal trouble for using unlicensed samples in their recordings.

The sampling style was also being parodied, notably by Star Turn on 45 (Pints) with their UK number 12 hit "Pump Up the Bitter",[5] and by Harry Enfield's "Loadsamoney" single (produced by a young William Orbit).

Les Adams also released "Check This Out" under the LA Mix moniker—a record that replayed "Pump Up the Volume" and "This is a journey into sound" soundbites before a male voice yells, "Oh not again!

After continual setbacks resulting from the uneasy M|A|R|R|S collaboration, the organization gave up and released its own version in 1995 under "Greed featuring Ricardo da Force".

In 1990, "Pump Up the Volume" became the theme song for the highly popular Finnish sketch comedy show Pulttibois, starring Pirkka-Pekka Petelius and Aake Kalliala.

[6] "Pump Up the Volume" was featured on Just Dance 2 (2010) as a downloadable track but became unavailable for purchase following the shutdown of the Wii Shop Channel on January 30, 2019.

[9] In 2006, Slant Magazine ranked it 32nd in its "100 Greatest Dance Songs" list, writing, "M/A/R/R/S's "Pump Up the Volume", which took its title sample from an Erik B.

& Rakim song, was a milestone in the world of sampling culture, snatching bits of Criminal Element Orchestra's "Put the Needle to the Record", old soul records (a few years before Josh Davis hit the dustbins), and Ofra Haza's "Im Nin'alu" (long before Kanye [West] played his 45s at the wrong speed)... A one-off collaboration between British indie label 4AD's Colourbox and A.R.