Lords of the Underground: “Chief Rocka” Music Video
From Here Come The Lords [Capitol, 1993]

Time’s a little tight right now so I’m going to let Can I Bring My Gat do most of the talking. A supplement to bse’s post on the LOTUG, here’s the music video to “Chief Rocka,” one of many standout cuts on their 1993 debut.

Note: Because of the size of music videos, they will be taken off the site sooner than audio files to conserve bandwith. Don’t sleep.

Ohio Players: “Ecstasy” and “(I Wanna Know) Do You Feel It”
From: Ecstasy (Westbound, 1973)

It always seems strange to me how little coverage there is of The Ohio Players in blogland so consider this my first step in changing that for the better. What originally caught my eye with these funk fiends was their brilliantly over the top album covers for their westbound recordings, a mixture of overt sexuality and bizarre s&m featuring a rather scary bald woman. It’s really worth a post of it’s own but you can find a selection of their fold out covers here.

Formed at the very end of the 50’s as the Ohio Untouchables before reforming as the Ohio Players in 1968, the group really hit form at the start of the seventies releasing at least one album a year throughout the decade and maintaining an amazingly high standard throughout. If you see any of their seventies albums in the shops pick them up as they’re pretty much a guarantee of quality.

Anyway, onto today’s music, two songs from the band’s 1973 album Ecstasy. The first of their albums I was introduced to, it still holds a fond place in my heart being of consistently excellent quality throughout (excluding the rather limp Silly Billy).

The first song is the title track itself, a wickedly funky little number. From the moment the bass riff starts proceedings it’s a tune that dares you to attempt not to nod your head along to it. I love the raw passion of the vocals and the piano that tinkles over the top of the groove. Great backing vocals as well on this one. Having done a quick check this song appears to be pretty much free from sampling which astonishes me as it’s bassline alone is crying out for use in some g-funk production.

The second track, (I Wanna Know) Do You Feel It, starts as a more downtempo number, a slow groove for gettin’ it on if you like. Lovely vocal harmonies again and my old friend the hammond organ is used to excellent effect in the breakdown three minutes in. The change of tempo to upbeat gets me everytime as the players lay down the funk for the last minute and a half of the track.

Well there you have it, if you like what you hear let me know and I’ll continue my campaign to get The Ohio Players music back on more people’s playlists………..

Prince Paul feat. De La Soul: More Than You Know
From A Prince Among Thieves (Tommy Boy, 1999)
Nightmares on Wax feat. De La Soul: Keep On Rockin’
From The Sound of N.O.W 12″ (Matador/Warp, 2000)
De La Soul: I Gotta Believe
From Parappa 7″ (Tommy Boy, 2001)

Couple more De La tracks from the period between Stakes (which, for what it’s worth, is one of my favorite records from them; Dinninit and The Breaks are my summer evening soundtrack) and The Grind Date for you to revisit.

One of my favorite things De La do on the early records is pick a certain rhythmic pattern, and fit their lyrics to that template. They kinda moved away from that style later on, but it’s back in effect on this track (“I/ enjoy the gettin away from day/ to day stress so I need to leave/ soon”). They also flip their patented verselong metaphors (crackdealer as travel agent, addiction as a girlfriend) and pull it off in a pretty fresh way. Plus, they’re playing fucking crackheads, which is definitely rad. This track has it all: Pos and Dave rapping with Breez from Juggaknotts, Prince Paul on the vintage beat, and it’s from a damn rap opera. What more do you want?

Nightmares on Wax is a British dude whose music fits in nicely with the Ninjatune set. Usually on these types of albums, it’s the cuts with emcees on them that tend to slow the record down, but this one’s a highlight (shit, De La even made that one Propellerheads track worth listening to). Nice slow b-boy style break, bouncy rhymes. Nightmares on Wax’s DJ Kicks mix on K records is also worth checking.

Ok, so if you thought rhyming about Joe’s Apartment was unexpected, on this last one they’re rhyming about a video game, specifically Parappa the Rapper. Now, I’m not familiar with this game, so maybe I don’t get it, but it’s kind of surprising to me that emcees of such a high caliber would roll with such a cartoony and dumbed down version of their livelihood. I mean, I don’t hear Q-Bert doing demos for Superstar Scratchmaster or whatever (though he does trade cuts with the dude from Linkn Park on that new Handsome Boy record). Whatever though, the track sounds alright, and I’m glad the guys don’t give a shit. Trick Daddy better do a cut with Sugarbear or something though, or it’s going to be De La who truly rep for the kids.

Black Moon: “Who Got Da Props (Music Video)”
From Enta Da Stage [Nervous, 1993]

I can’t imagine many hip hop purists out there without Black Moon’s 1993 debut Enta Da Stage in their crates. The trio comprised of Buckshot, 5 Ft. Accelerator, and DJ Evil D out of Brooklyn, New York released this single in ‘92 before dropping their highly regarded debut. Unfortunately, like so many hip hop groups, label woes and personality conflicts dismantled the trio before they could release a proper follow-up. They did manage to regroup a few years later and release the dissapointing Warzone in ‘99.

Anyways, I just came up on a grip of classic hip hop videos, “Who Got Da Props” being one of them and I can’t imagine many of you have seen it before. Not a huge concept behind this one besides a lot of head bobbing and hand gesturing behind an urban backdrop, which seemed to be a popular formula back then. It still puts a smile on my face though.

I’ll be posting more classic hip hop videos in the future so keep checking back.

Dr. Dre: Nuthin’ But a G Thang (Club mix)
From Nuthin’ But a G Thang 12″ (Interscope, 1992)
Snoop Dogg: Gin and Juice (Laid Back mix)
From Gin and Juice 12″ (Interscope, 1993)

There’s really nothing I can say about these songs that hasn’t been said before: everyone and their little sister can sing along word for word, pop production masterpieces, genre-defining, blah blah blah – but did you hear the remix?

“Nuthin’ But a G Thang” lets Dre and Snoop rip shit up over the beat that would later be used for “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” while “Gin and Juice” gets a minor readjustment, retaining the same instrumentation and overall vibe as the original. Needless to say, neither of these reworkings is remotely fucking with the OGs, but it’s still fun to make the comparison.

Little Boy Blues “Seed of Love”
From In The Woodland of Weir [Fontana, 1968]

The days of producers pulling old funk and jazz records for sample material are over; for the most part anyways. Sure they’ll continue to loop and chop the fuck out of “Apache” or “Nautilus,” but let’s face it, that gets boring fast.

Enter the wonderful world of psych rock, a resource that many producers are finding relatively untapped, proving that there is definite heat a lurking under the wailing vocals and fuzzy guitars of the genre. Motown67 from Soulstrut played this for me a few weeks ago, a track called “Seed of Love” by Little Boy Blues which was sampled by Just Blaze for Jay-Z’s The Black Album. The piano riff on this one is just nasty, while the keys, horns, drums, guitars, and vocals all fall nicely into place. This is the type of record every producer wishes they found first, and that everyone is after once somebody does.

Keep your eyes open for this one cause the album as a whole is rock solid.

Since posting this it was brought to my attention that another track on this album, “Dream Weaver,” was sampled by Diamond D on Xzibit’s “Bird’s Eye View” way back in 1996. No surprise that Diamond of all people was up on this first, but I’m surprised he didn’t hear any potential on “Seed of Love.” Oh well, it just goes to show that it was in a producer’s hands long ago, but it took eight years for it to hit the mainstream.

Neneh Cherry: “So Here I Come” and “Manchild”
From: Raw Like Sushi (Virgin Records, 1989)

It’s blog confession time, when Neneh Cherry’s debut album came out I developed a major childhood crush on the lady. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the attitude, maybe it was that she was the closest thing we’d ever had to a great UK rapper at the time, maybe it was seeing her perform Buffalo Stance on Top Of The Pops while 7 months pregnant without a care in the world, who knows? Whatever the reason I’m pleased to see my adolescent tastes weren’t all absolutely shit as this album that I played to death on my old record player when it came out still stands up to scrutiny today. While less willfully obscure than most of the music I post I still believe this is well worthy of a reappraisal.

Part of the “Wild Bunch” crew, which also consisted of Massive Attack and Tricky, the album was definitely helped by the production work of Massive Attack’s DJ Mushroom and the legendary Bomb The Bass. In my personal opinion nothing Cherry has done in the subsequent 16 years has really touched the brilliance of her debut album with it’s combination of hip hop, electronica and r’n'b vibes as she quickly chose to go down a less vibrant, safer route in her later albums. You can read more about the lady here.

The first song I have for you today is Here I Come. From the moment the looped guitar riff comes in you know it’s going to be a great rap record but what really sells it is the bass line that raises its head about 50 seconds in. I love the raw energy of this track and the fact that it’s Neneh rapping about her childhood. Check out the breakdown about 2 minutes in as well with DJ Mushroom throwing in a whole multitude of classic samples. I’m a firm believer that if you dropped this in a club today it would still tear up the crowd.

The second track is the classic Manchild, cowritten by Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Delnaja. I always loved the old school break beat with those quality synthetic strings layered over the top. Although it contains a few short bursts of rap this is really more about Neneh’s singing voice and she does a great job with it, especially considering the quite unusual subject matter of the song. Check out the scratched “huhs” and the fluttery keyboard chords as well, absolute classic.

Handsome Boy Modeling School (feat. De La Soul): “If it Wasn’t For You”
From White People (Atlantic, 2004)
De La Soul: “Sweet Dreams”
From More Supa Sweet Stakes, Baby (Tommy Boy, 1996)
De La Soul: “Speed Limit”
From Stimulated Vol. 1 (Stimulated/Loud, 2001)

It’s great to hear positive buzz about De La Soul again. For a while I really thought Stakes is High would be their last solid effort in the LP format. But even though I wasn’t really feeling the Art Official series too much, the brothers Plug sprinkled the faithful with some worthwhile oddities and side tracks over the last several years. Here’s the first of two sets of cuts you may or may not have caught.

First up one of the most recent, from latest Handsome Boy Modeling School record. Sort of a rap Letters to Things and People, we’ve got Pos and Dave addressing some of the particulars that made them the supa emcees they are today. Kind of a nice answer to the question “What would De La Soul sound like if they were still working with Prince Paul?”

The next track brings up another question; “What the fuck is De La doing rapping about Joe’s Apartment?” Actually, if you ignore the subject matter of the first verse, this is a dope little song. More evidence to the fact that these guys really didn’t give a shit about what you thought, and just did what would be good for a laugh. Or I guess you could take the stance that they were aiming to pocket a quick buck, but judging from the song, and the fact that they included it on their own record apart from the movie soundtrack, I’m going with the former.

Another collaboration which reaches back to the Three Feet High era posse, “Speed Limit” hooks De La back up with Dante “The Scrub” Ross for a contribution to his Stimulated Vol. 1 comp. This one’s on some summer shit. Despite the fact that it’s called “Speed Limit,” it always make me think of rolling around hella slow with the windows down, sipping on a big gulp or something. Tracks like this were made for the late afternoon. HOT!

More De La bizness in a couple, keep it locked.

Q-Bert: Live Performance
From somewhere in the UK at some time

There was a point in time when I really wanted to go out and be a scratch DJ. I guess it was around ‘99 when I was primarily a hip hop head. I was going to college, gettin’ into records and the whole urban culture thing. I didn’t even consider myself a DJ back then (nor do I now really), but then I heard about this dude that called himself Q-Bert. I mean, I think I knew about him earlier from the Skratchpiklz and all, but I think it was around this time that Wave Twisters came out and I was actively checking for his music in addition to a bunch of other DJs. I was heavy into the ftp/napster/PtoP file transfer stuff when I eventually came across this video of a demonstration he did somewhere in the UK I’m assuming. That was the shit that did it. Up until that point I didn’t even realize some of the things he did were possible on turntables, and just watching him struck me with the drive and determination to study the art of scratching. Soon after that, however, I not only realized that I sucked, but that I didn’t have the time nor the patience to devote to such a tedious skill. Regardless, I still watch this vid from time to time as a little time capsule of my life, as well as a reminder that Q-Bert is one of the best scratch DJs in the world. This was a while ago too, and dude’s only improved with age. Wicka wicka.

Spirit: “The Other Song”
From Son of Spirit [Mercury, 1975]

I think a lot of people are thanking Diplo and Tripledouble for dropping the insanely dope AEIOU Two last year, an eclectic journey through beats and breaks that sheds light on what makes this whole digging thing worthwhile. Although every track they used is heat, one of them in particular stands out and has lead to a number of heads hitting up message boards frantically searching for the song’s identity. I was surprised to find out it was a track by Spirit, a rock band from the Bay Area that experimented with psychedlia, jazz, funk, and blues to create a unique sound for themselves during the early 70’s. After lead singer Jay Ferguson left the band, members Randy California and Ed Cassidy perservered and released Son of Spirit under Spirit’s name, but unfortunately this release was shunned into obscurity due in large part to the band’s new genetic makeup. The track Diplo and Tripledouble used is called “The Other Song”, an incredible mix of psych, blues, jazz, and funk. The slow pacing and hypnotic guitar playing allows for some especially eerie vocals, eventually evolving into a more upbeat jazz number before falling back again. While I can’t really recommend the album as a whole, this track alone is so worth the purchase. Essential.