We all know that after the releases of Everybody Jam and Let It Go in 1996 and 1997 and the little '97 concert tour, it seemed like there was a relatively long hiatus until the last year of his life in which lung cancer counted his days. A third album was being made in 1997, produced by an American producer according to John in the November 1997 AAHS World Radio interview, but it never got released. Steal The Base was composed during the same year, presumeably by the same producer from America, and then featured in an OST for a baseball movie alongside Mambo Jambo. The year after, Scatmambo, a Latin-styled song, was produced for a German romantic movie. Tony Catania and Ingo Kays left the role of being his producers and the music company assigned Kai Matthiesen, the creator of the German hit song Coco Jambo, as their successor. Official musical activity from John got less and less and it's likely that he started to slowly withdraw from the pop scene and the Scatman project and to return to his Jazz roots.
However, health issues prevented him to take this path and as he felt that he wouldn't be around for long, he meticulously continued his work on the Scatman project in mid or late 1998. It's the best after all to use the most of one's possibly last days for one's metier than to spend these days like any other and then having regrets on the death bed for not completing one's loved business. John flew to Kai Matthiesen's studio in Bremen, Germany to create Take Your Time, his very last album. The frequent appearances of backing singers is clearly noticeable and when looking at it in hindsight of his death, these backing singers were necessary to reduce the workload in regard to his health issues. This is especially apparent in his vocals. His voice sounds more gruff than usual on the low notes. When singing in higher notes, his voice comes more from his head than from his chest which makes him sound thin. These are signs that he could have had a disease related to his respiration.
More Latin-themed songs got composed like I Love Samba or The Chickadee Song, romantic songs like Take Me Away or Everyday found their way on the album, but there are no socio-political songs anymore. John still gives personal advice in Take Your Time for young men who struggle finding a love. He was still riding on the dance train with Ichi Ni San... Go and Night Train, a contribution to electroswing pioneering just like Game Over Jazz' Scatman or Everybody Jam. Dream Again on the contrast is a meditative song. He already made such tracks during his first two albums with Song Of Scatland and Message To You. It seems like that Dream Again was his true TYT song as he often preached finding inner peace in oneself through "being spiritually present in Scatland" which is a kind of meditative state. Take Your Time was even less successful than Everybody Jam. The means of promoting this album were scarce. John was ill and could not appear for shooting music videos of Take Your Time or Scatmambo. It is said that Ichi Ni San... Go, a TYT single, supposedly had a minor success in Germany like Everybody Jam's single did in Czechia, but information about it is nowhere to be found in German charts data. What should not be neglected is the impact of Take Your Time. Like Scatman's World, this song is shockingly ahead of its time. The internet nowadays is plagued by red-pill-influencers who try to poison the male youth with their "teachings" on how to treat one's female partner. The treatment they teach their young followers is often oppressive. The tragedy is that many people misunderstand this track as a farewell song, a swansong, because the pensive and patient sound of the music can also be interpreted as being sad.
Parallel to Take Your Time, John recorded his real swan song at home in his Scatland Studios entitled "Can You Hear Me". This track carries more of the essence from Scatman's World and Everybody Jam than Take Your Time. He gives the listener advice on how to live a happy life for which self-acceptance and giving and taking are key. Its tune sounds truely melancholic and can be eye-wettening. The music style is once again completely different from his earlier works, even from Take Your Time, as arrangement and text were written solely by himself. The song in its core was finished, but the polish never got completed and thus it slightly feels like a demo. In 1999, John got diagnosed with lung cancer which confirms all these signs of poor health and later that year, he was too ill to carry on the work on Can You Hear Me. A CD of the song was given to his friend Gina who then forwarded it around 20 years later to Iceberg Records for them to release it posthumously. On December 3rd, 1999, John lost the fight to lung cancer and left to a better place. All fans around the world mourned his death and it is raining on Earth since then.