In the tenth episode of their documentary series Anthrax 40 , Anthrax told the story of one of their biggest hits and also one of their biggest surprises: the fun track “I'm The Man”.
Released in 1987, the song stands out from everything Anthrax had done up to that point, with their album Among The Living – a heavy thrash metal record – having been released only recently. “I'm The Man” is a satirical song about Anthrax itself that mixes rap with metal and elements of Jewish and Italian music, creating an intriguing, fun, and energetic blend. “We’ve had a lot of inside jokes throughout our career, but ‘I'm The Man’ is the only one that went platinum,” said vocalist Scott Ian.
According to the band, the idea came from a line in the movie Easy Money (1983), which Frank Bello kept repeating. “I thought it was hilarious. The line 'Alison, I'm the man' stuck in my head and I kept repeating it nonstop. I think I became annoying because I wouldn't stop saying it, and it ended up becoming a song,” Frank recounted.
According to the band, the initial idea was to get the Beastie Boys to rap on the track, but they couldn't get in touch, so Anthrax themselves wrote and sang the rhymes. Since two band members were Jewish (Ian and Dan Spitz ) and the rest were Italian, they decided to blend a Jewish folk song with Italian elements, also adding samples, scratches, and, of course, heavy metal. “Take the most cheesy thing the Beastie Boys did and make it even cheesier,” Scott Ian compared. “The Beastie Boys are very clever [compared to “I'm The Man].”
The song was released as a B-side to the single “I Am The Law” and, according to the band, it was just for fun. Scott Ian states that he was sure the song would be forgotten, but that didn't happen. “It started playing on the radio and people started requesting it live and things escalated to a point where we started talking about an EP just to promote 'I'm The Man',” says Ian. “We played that song in front of 80,000 metal and hard rock fans and they went crazy and sang every word. It was the exact opposite of what we thought people's reaction would be.”
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