For anyone in the New York City area this week, come check out Chawky White live, this Thursday at Webster Hall. It’s Chawky’s first public performance so it’s sure to be one to remember! Chawky will be performing 3 songs (all produced by Ill Tal) from his upcoming project. Come check it out.
Wu-Tang is no stranger to Thelma Houston‘s disco hit “Don’t Leave Me This Way“. They flipped the intro for Killah Priest‘s “Tai Chi“. However, RZA used it first for GZA‘s classic single about record label woes – “Labels“.
It’s extremely hard to catch, but if you listen closely you can hear it burried beneath the loud drums/bass of “Labels”. RZA looped/triggered one of the last bars of the intro. For anyone with an untrained ear, I posted some audio below to listen how it was chopped. I also filtered the main loop of the GZA track so it’s easier to hear. Enjoy.
Before G-Unit blew up, a then black-balled 50 Cent was desperately trying to get back into the music industry. After problems with his Trackmasters-produced Power of a Dollar was shelved by Columbia Records, he went on to record the indy LP Guess Who’s Back? in 2002. The album featured cuts with Nas, who was also facing problems with Columbia Records.
One of the stand-out cuts on the album was “F*ck You” produced by DJ Clark Kent. The song samples Reuben Howell’s “When a Man Loves a Woman“, a remake of the Percy Sledge classic. For some additional info on the Reuben Howell album, check out my earlier post highlighting a drum break from the same LP.
Buckshot, front man of Black Moon and leader of the Bootcamp Click released his solo effort The BDI Thug in 1999. The album met with mixed reviews as Buck had abandoned the trademark Beatminerz sound that made Bootcamp famous. Instead, the album was filled with generic, overly-dramatic keyboard beats which were popular at the time. Many of those terrible beats were actually produced by a then unknown producer named Just Blaze. As legend has it, Just met Jay-Z and was told to explore a more soulful sound and stay away from the keyboards. If that’s true, it worked.
Buckshot did have a few cuts produced by Da Beatminerz via Baby Paul on the album. The standout being “Breath Control” which samples Catalyst‘s
“New-Found Truths“.
Catalyst was a Jazz-fusion group out of Philadelphia. Their debut, self-titled album was released on Cobblestone Records, a subsidiary of Buddha. Eddie Green was the leader of the group and worked with artists such as Etta James, O.C. Smith, and Billy Paul. The overall vibe of the album is very dope with heavy use of bass and electric vibes. Check out the cut.
This album has a similiar sound to the previous, adding a little more funk/soul to the overall rock sound. The track “Honey Do” has dope, fast-paced drum break in the intro. The kick drum bass hits so low that it almost sounds like someone mixed a Roland 808 in the background. Check it out.
When people think of Motown Records artists like Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and Smokey Robinson come to mind – not Reuben Howell. I don’t have any information on him and I couldn’t find any on the internet either. His debut, self-titled album was released in 1973. The album has an overall soulful feel, with some decent music, but nothing ground-breaking. I don’t recognize any of the artists/producers in the liner notes and there is no picture of him on the jacket. This all leads me to believe they didn’t have much faith in Reuben blowing up.
Regardless, there is a dope drum break on the album, on the cut “Help the People“. Check it out.
I can’t say enough about Funkmaster Wizard Wiz. He was a bugged out dude making a really bugged out type of Hip-Hop, especially for the mid-80′s. The single “Crack It Up” / “Can’t You Take a Hint?” was released in the mid-80′s during the crack epidemic that was sweeping inner cities of America, especially in New York City. So what does Funkmaster do? He makes a song about the pleasures of smoking crack. Yup – a pro-crack song.
I don’t have the history on the single, but there must have been some type of controversy because the version of the single I have over-dubs the words “don’t” in front of the “Crack it Up” chorus. However, a version does exist in all it’s pro-crack glory, advising you to “put it in a pipe, and smoke it“.
The B-Side, which I posted up here, is just as weird. Funkmaster is basically saying all the crazy things he would do, proving just how crazy he is. The “Bellevue Patient” in the song references a psychiatric hospital in New York City. The beat replays Barry White‘s “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little Bit More“. This is one of the earliest uses of the song as a sample or possibly the first. Hopefully Funkmaster didn’t turn out to be a crack head.
Q-Tip‘s “The Renaissance” is one of my favorite non-golden era hip-hop albums. Q-Tip’s rhymes are on point and the mix of sampled/live beats are incredible. The first single off the album, “Gettin Up” loops the intro from Black Ivory’s “You & I“. What’s even cooler about the beat is that Q-Tip left it as a 5 bar loop, which is not common in Hip-Hop at all.
Black Ivory was a soul group from Harlem, New York and had a lot of chart success in the earlier part of their career. Leroy Burgess was a member of the group and responsible for writing most of their hits. As up-tempo soul and disco became more popular, Black Ivory didn’t, eventually calling it quits in the late 70′s. One of the samples for Raekwon‘s “Criminalogy” is also on this album.