Mass Production was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 funk/disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

 musical group

Band (music)

In music, a musical ensemble or band is a group of musicians that works together to perform music. The following articles concern types of musical bands:* All-female band* Big band* Boy band* Christian band* Church band* Concert band* Cover band...

, best known for their 1979 hit

Hit record

A hit record is a sound recording, usually in the form of a single or album, that sells a large number of copies or otherwise becomes broadly popular or well-known, through airplay, club play, inclusion in a film or stage play soundtrack, causing it to have "hit" one of the popular chart listings...

, "Firecracker." Based in Norfolk

Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....

, Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, the ten-piece group had a series of minor R&B

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

 hits in the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Firecracker" is commonly misattributed to the similarly named (and sonically/stylistically similar) band Brass Construction

Brass Construction

Brass Construction was an American funk group formed in Brooklyn, New York in 1968. They were originally known as Dynamic Soul, and went on to record a string of hit singles and albums through to 1985.-Career:...

.

The band consisted of Kevin Douglas (bass

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 and vocals), James Drumgole (trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

, flugelhorn

Flugelhorn

The flugelhorn is a brass instrument resembling a trumpet but with a wider, conical bore. Some consider it to be a member of the saxhorn family developed by Adolphe Sax ; however, other historians assert that it derives from the valve bugle designed by Michael Saurle , Munich 1832 , thus...

, and vocals), Agnes "Tiny" Kelly (lead vocals

Lead vocalist

The lead vocalist is the member of a band who sings the main vocal portions of a song. They may also play one or more instruments. Lead vocalists are sometimes referred to as the frontman or frontwoman, and as such, are usually considered to be the "leader" of the groups they perform in, often the...

, vocoder

Vocoder

A vocoder is an analysis/synthesis system, mostly used for speech. In the encoder, the input is passed through a multiband filter, each band is passed through an envelope follower, and the control signals from the envelope followers are communicated to the decoder...

; later replaced by Dee (DeeDee) Henderson), Larry Marshall (lead vocals, percussion), Gregory McCoy (saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

), Emmanuel Redding (percussion), Ricardo Williams (lead vocals, drums

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, percussion), Tyrone Williams (keyboards), Rodney Phelps (lead guitar

Lead guitar

Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...

, keyboards), and LeCoy Bryant (rhythm guitar

Rhythm guitar

Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...

, vocals). An eleventh member, Samuel Williams joined in the early 1980s

1980s

File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...

.

In addition to "Firecracker," which hit number four on the R&B

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...

 chart

Record chart

A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....

 in the late summer of 1979, other hits by the band include "Cosmic Lust", "Groove Me", and "Shante." The group stayed together for several more years, scoring a string of small hits, before deciding to disband in 1983.

"Firecracker" was sampled

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

 by 2 Live Crew

2 Live Crew

2 Live Crew was a hip hop group from Miami, Florida. They caused considerable controversy with the sexual themes in their work, particularly on their 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be.- Early career :...

 in 1989 for their own hit single

Single (music)

In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 "Me So Horny

Me So Horny

"Me So Horny" is a song by rap group 2 Live Crew on their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be. It reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart and #26 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1989 despite lack of airplay due to the controversial nature of the lyrics...

", from their album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 As Nasty As They Wanna Be

As Nasty As They Wanna Be

As Nasty As They Wanna Be is the third album by Miami rap group 2 Live Crew. It was released in 1989, and became their largest seller, going 2x Platinum. In 1990, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled that the album was legally obscene; this ruling was later...

.

Studio albums

• Welcome to Our World (1976)
• Believe (1977)
• Three Miles High (1978)
• In the Purest Form (1979)
• Massterpiece (1980)
• Turn Up the Music (1981)
• In a City Groove (1982)
• 83 (1983)