November 2005: Dynamite single, animated Linea homage, outdoor London projections
(Don’t) Give Hate a Chance is the third UK single from Jamiroquai’s sixth studio album Dynamite, released on 7 November 2005 by Sony BMG. Jay Kay co-wrote it with Rob Harris, Matt Johnson, Sola Akingbola and Derrick McKenzie; Kay and Mike Spencer produced. The album cut runs just over five minutes; the video edit trims to 3:46 without losing the four-on-the-floor thrust or the stacked chorus.
The lyric flips John Lennon’s peace slogan into a warning: do not feed hate, do not dress it as cool. Musically it sits in late-period Jamiroquai disco-funk: clipped guitar from Harris, tight drums from McKenzie, keyboard stabs that keep the pocket dancing while Kay’s falsetto rides the hook. It is message music that still clears a floor.
Directors Alex & Martin (Alexandre Courtes and Martin Fougerolle) made the band’s only fully computer-animated promo, openly nodding to Osvaldo Cavandoli’s Italian cartoon La Linea. An animated Kay dances along a white line while stick figures mime conflict; Sony BMG even projected the clip onto Chelsea Barracks walls and a Soho car park in mid-October 2005 before the single street date.
Don’t give hate a chance.
(Hook lyric, (Don’t) Give Hate a Chance, Dynamite, Sony BMG, 2005)
On the charts the single reached the UK top forty and kept Dynamite visible after Feels Just Like It Should and Seven Days in Sunny June. A second video cut replaced the bare white ground with plants and rocks late in October, proof Sony treated the animation as a campaign object, not a throwaway.
Return to the album mix and the bass still digs under the slogan. Beside the album’s hotter club tracks, (Don’t) Give Hate a Chance is the one that pairs Kay’s social streak with a cartoon that looks like Italian TV memory. Dance first, then the line lands.
