Songfacts®:

• "Jungle Fever" is the theme song to the 1991 Spike Lee movie of the same name starring Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra as an interracial couple. Lee also acts in the film, telling Snipes' character: "You's got jungle fever. The both of you's."
  
  The song was written specifically for the film and describes the plot, so we have lines like:
  
  She's gone black-boy crazy, I've gone white-girl hazy
  Ain't no thinking maybe, we're in love
  She's got jungle fever, I've got jungle fever
  We've got jungle fever, we're in love
  
  It's a catchy tune from a major movie, but it wasn't released as a single, probably for fear of controversy. It did help the soundtrack album sell over 500,000 copies and hit #1 on the R&B albums chart.
• Stevie Wonder did the entire Jungle Fever soundtrack. Three singles were released from it, including "Gotta Have You," which made the pop chart at #92. In 1984, Wonder did most of the soundtrack for the movie Woman In Red, including the song "I Just Called To Say I Love You," which was a #1 hit. He later contributed to the soundtracks of The Adventures of Pinocchio, Mulan and Sing.
• The phrase "jungle fever" has been around for a while, but we have Spike Lee to thank for using it to describe an attraction between a Black man and white woman, or vice-versa. Back in 1935 a Black vocal group called The Mills Brothers released a song called "Jungle Fever" where they long for a lovely lady in the Congo. Various white acts released songs of that title in the '50s and '60s, and then in 1972 "Jungle Fever" by The Chakachas was a hit. That song, a funky rhythm interrupted at regular intervals by bedroom sounds, was made by a Belgian production team but presented by a Latin rock group from New York City called Bario, who became the touring version of The Chakachas.
• In line with Stevie Wonder's ethos, the song specifically calls out the folks who don't accept interracial romance:
  
  Everyone's created equal
  Hell with all you ignorant people
  
  Wonder did more than his part to advance the civil rights movement in America. His 1980 song "Happy Birthday" is about Martin Luther King, Jr. and part of his successful campaign to get King's birthday declared a national holiday.