However you want to measure it-- originality, influence, inventiveness, longevity, personality, skill-- E-40 is one of the greatest rappers of all time.
This mix is a tribute to him in the tradition of my previous mixes devoted to DJ Quik, R. Kelly, Gang Starr and Too $hort (the latter with DJ Eleven). If you've heard any of them, you know I go all out-- meticulously selecting, sequencing and mixing songs to put together the best possible representation of those artists' music. This mix is no exception.
I chose 40 songs from all eras of E-40's career, from 1990's "Let's Side" to his current single, "Function". His catalog is so vast and deep that picking just 40 songs to represent him was incredibly tough, but I've tried to fit in everything from mob slumpers and album sleepers to radio and club hits. Obviously, there are a lot of other classic songs that could have been on here but aren't; I picked the ones that to me best embody his work as a whole. Or are just ones I really love.
If you enjoy this, go grab E-40's three (!) new albums, Block Brochure Volumes 1-3. They are due out this coming Tuesday but you can pre-order them now.
Oh and, I want to thank the great Stephanie Gardner, who laced the cover, and also DJ Eleven, who provided an invaluable second set of ears.
Too $hort played his first major show. Or at least I think so.
In the D'wayne Wiggins documentary Life Is, promoter Lionel Bea talks about Too $hort's first appearance at a large venue, when he opened for U.T.F.O. Bea describes how even though Too $hort had been in the streets grinding tapes for years and had played a lot of house parties and small events, he'd never played for a large audience. No one knew how popular he really was. Apparently when $hort came out and thousands of people not only knew who he was, they knew all the lyrics to his songs, it marked a turning point in his career. Too $hort wasn't even on the bill in the poster above, but I'm pretty sure this is the concert Bea was talking about.
This poster hangs on my wall. I prefer to associate March 9th with this, rather than that other thing.
It doesn't happen much these days but sometimes I'll get obsessed with a rap beat and just have to know where the sample comes from.
Obviously I'm not alone in this; I've seen the internet go nuts when people revealed the unknown samples behind classic records, whether it's a straight loop from an incredibly obscure record (e.g., Nas's "Represent") or a wild manipulation of something common (like Raekwon's "Ice Cream" or Mobb Deep's "Shook Ones Pt. II" ).
For 17 years, this sample had been bugging the hell out of me:
I absolutely love the way K-Def put the record together-- the eerie string stabs that start it off, the way the scratch hook just kind of wraps around the beat and how tense it feels until the drums and the vocal drop. A lot of people have sampled strings but I can't think of another record where anyone made them sound so huge or hard-hitting.
Anyhow, for a long time I had no idea what record the sample came from. I assumed it was from a soundtrack, since it has such a cinematic feel and because producers back then were grabbing a lot of stuff from OSTs composed by composers like Quincy Jones and Lalo Schifrin. Every time I saw a 60s era soundtrack LP I would listen to it thinking "this might be the one".
Back then, things aren't like they are now where you can just go to whosampled.com and see a relatively comprehensive list of samples with sound clips. There was no discogs.com that gathered and organized a lot of information about out of print releases. There was nothing like youtube that allowed you to skim an endless array of songs. There was just elbow grease, word of mouth and luck.
About ten years ago I asked my friend Jared Boxx from Big City Records-- one of the most clued-in sample spotters I know-- whether he knew what record it was and he said he heard it might be from a Louie Bellson album. I made a mental note and went out of my way to listen to any Louis Bellson record I could find, which is not easy because he has dozens of albums. When I learned that he had done a record with Lalo Schifrin, I figured that the sample probably came from that album. I also figured it would turn up sooner or later at one of my regular spots. It never did.
I sort of forgot about it until last year, when I started digging around online for the Louis Bellson/Lalo Schifrin album, Explorations. Even in this era where seemingly every collectable record is easily available from iTunes or a blog, there were few traces of the album online-- a mention on discogs.com, an appearance on a college radio playlist and an appearance on someone's want list were about it. Eventually I found a reasonably priced copy online and pulled the trigger hoping it would put an end to my search. And it did.
After hearing this I can't believe how K-Def freaked the sample, just taking a series of isolated stabs and rearranging them into a beat that knocks. It must have taken a lot of imagination to figure out how to use the sample that way and tremendous skill to execute it so well.
If you've never heard Real Live's sole album, The Turnaround: A Long Awaited Drama, I highly recommend it. Larry O is an underrated rapper and K-Def absolutely kills the beats, including some things that I thought were totally played out before I heard him flip them (like Bob James's "Nautilus" and Lou Donaldson's "It's Your Thing").
For what it's worth, K-Def is still at it. He recently released a mostly instrumental album, Night Shift, where he recreates and reinterprets a lot of sample-based classics (e.g., Nas's "one Love", Camp Lo's "Sparkle", Pete Rock's "Escapism" and "For Pete's Sake") as well as the Neptunes beat for Snoop Dogg's "Let's Get Blown", which I don't think involved a sample. I'm not really into instrumental hip hop but he did a really good job of it. There are also a couple tracks with vocals, including a cool one that I think is exclusive to the physical copies.
Two related things:
I always wondered what the story was behind this record, which came out about 6 months after "Real Live Shit" and was clearly jacked from it:
Hands On: "Got Me Open" (Aftermath, 1996)
The production is credited solely to Bud'da but there's no way he came up with that arrangement on his own-- even the drum pattern is bitten! It's just such a weird thing for Dr. Dre to have released as one of the first things on Aftermath.
This other song from the Louis Bellson/Lalo Schifrin album has a piece that sounds uncannily like Radiohead's "Pyramid Song":
Louis Bellson & Lalo Schifrin: "Toledano" (snippet) (Roulette, 1964)
Over at the Stay Hatin' tumblr site, I just posted a new episode of the rap talk podcast I do with SergDun and Soft Money.
It's probably the most amateurish podcast we've done to date but maybe also my favorite. I like about 90% of the selections and the conversation felt great this time. I also edited this show a little differently, leaving in some of the in-studio back and forth where we hash out what we want to play-- it's an excellent window into how he we put these shows together.
Unfortunately we made a mistake with the mic levels so much of my talking and Serg's talking is painfully distorted. If you can deal with some distortion and care at all about new rap music, I recommend it. Here's a direct link to download it.
If you care at all about new rap music but can't deal with distortion, you might want to head over to the tumblr anyway so you can check out the songs we selected and some cool things we linked to (Too $hort talking to DJ Vlad about white people and the N-word, Too $hort sounding more humbled and apologetic than I ever would have imagined in Ebony, Noz's TDE profile from The Fader, Andre 3000's conversation with GQ).
Here are two things I mentioned over there with a little more context:
Messy Marv: "Intro" (Scalen, 2012)
Messy Marv is a San Francisco rapper famous for playing with his nose, beefing with other Bay rappers and releasing like one album per month. He's also dope.
This skit is the first track from his latest CD, Da New Frank Lukas Dat Neva Wore Da Mink Coat, a record that's enjoyable but bizarre on multiple levels, starting with the title. Frank Lucas was the drug kingpin turned snitch who was played by Denzel Washington in American Gangster. Marv is vehemently anti-snitch-- for example, he ignited a nasty beef with his cousin San Quinn, another rapper from the Fillmore with whom Marv has recorded multiple albums, after San Quinn allegedly IDed another rapper as the person who killed Fat Tone, the person who allegedly killed Mac Dre-- so it's weird that he not only names his album after a famous snitch but begins it with a skit in which he pretends to snitch on JT the Bigga Figga, another Fillmore rapper, for snitching on him.
The convoluted snitching-on-a-snitch premise is funny in itself but the details Marv inserts (caps on JT's lips, talking about his cold nipples, etc.) make this the funniest Messy Marv track I've heard since this:
Messy Marv: "Don't You Say That" (Scalen, 2005)
Last week DMX did a great interview on New York's Power 105. I'm not a huge fan of his music but hearing him talk about a lot of the crazy stuff he's been through in the last 10 years is fascinating. Also, his take on the current state of rap music (the source of the .gif below) is awesome.
I don't generally post much about my gigs but here are two worth mentioning.
I recently started doing a party at the Oakland Layover on the first Thursday of every month called HIGH LIFE. Over the past few years I've struggled to find a night and venue that's a good fit for the music I want to play. I've mostly ping-ponged between weekend parties that cracked but where I was held hostage by crowds who only wanted to hear current radio stuff and under-attended parties on off-nights where I could play whatever I liked for too few people.
Thus far, the two HIGH LIFE parties I've done have been a perfect balance. The Layover is a really unpretentious bar and when it jumps it has the feel of a great house party-- you know, sweaty windows, no attitude, people down for whatever. The two I've done so far have not only jumped, they've given me to play a huge cross-section of stuff I love but don't always get to play together: new raps, disco, old soul, house, dancehall, funk, salsa, etc. etc. (When Dave Chappelle and Donnell Rawlings showed up to hang out at the last one, I knew I was on to something.)
So, to recap: first Thursday of the month, at the Layover (1517 Franklin St. in Oakland), 10 pm to close, no cover. Good times.
Next Saturday, March 10th, I'm doing a one-off at Milk with Mr. Len of Company Flow, DJ B.Cause and Eddie K. This is special for a bunch of reasons: Mr. Len almost never plays out in the Bay, B.Cause and I very seldom get to DJ together, I don't play in SF all that often and, lastly and most importantly, it's a 50th birthday party for my friend DJ Stef.
Although I've known DJ Stef since the early 1990s, I can't even begin to describe all of the things she's done to contribute to the music scene, from creating the Vinyl Exchange fanzine (which was the first place I ever published writing about rap music), to hosting and DJing parties, to being there at just about any cool event over the years and enthusiastically supporting other DJs and people trying to do cool stuff. Any time I've got a question about a party or a venue or a dance step from back in the day, she's about the first person I go to! Also for me she's a model of how to age without turning into an old person.
A few years ago, I had the honor of DJing her all 45-themed 45th birthday party with Mr. Supreme, B.Cause and many others and it was a blast. I'm very excited to be participating in this one.
Details: Saturday, March 10th, Milk Bar (1840 Haight St., SF), 10 to close, $5.
A few years ago I received a mix of obscure teen soul ballads from my friend David Griffiths, a New York record dealer and obsessive who has curated some fine reissues on labels like Daptone and Kay-Dee. The selections in the mix were excellent and almost all were new to me.
Two tracks particularly grabbed me. Both featured an unusual pairing of airy female harmonies set against a wall of sludgy funk and heavy drums. One track was a snapshot of new love in bloom, the other a despairing slice of heartbreak. Both had a rawness and a purity that was totally transporting.
When I hit up David for details about those tracks, he explained they were taken from two sides of a phenomenal (and phenomenally rare) 7" single on the Flower City label by the Darling Dears & Funky Heavy (I had to ask twice to be sure I heard him right; the name just seemed too awesome to exist in real life). He told me how he had begun searching for the single after stumbling across a mention of it in Jeffrey Beckman's reference book, Soul Harmony Singles 1960-1990.
David's a native of Rochester a/k/a Flower City, so the label name piqued his curiosity and led him to uncover the story of how a teenage female quartet from Rochester, the Darling Dears, came to record with Funky Heavy, a local instrumental combo who roamed the area in a bus they called the Funky Skunk. Funky Heavy had often backed the Darling Dears during their rehearsals and live performances, so it was natural that they should go into a local studio together.
A thousand copies of their collaboration were pressed, but despite some local airplay the release was soon lost to posterity. The Darling Dears dropped out of the business, while Funky Heavy stuck it out, later morphing into High Voltage and then the Voltage Brothers. Under the latter name the group cut three well-distributed LPs and continue to perform to this day.
Over the years, the Darling Dears and Funky Heavy single became a holy grail for both sweet soul and funk collectors. For a time, only a handful of copies were known and the release reached stratospheric prices on eBay.
In 2008, David managed to track down the members of Funky Heavy, securing the masters and licensing the single for reissue. It is now the first release on his new label, Orivious, and it's been beautifully pressed and packaged. Orivious's distributor, Now-Again, is hosting a free download of "And I Love You" and selling copies of the 7" reissue.*
As a bonus, here's the original version of "I Don't Think I'll Ever Love Another", which was recorded by a male group, Rock Candy:
Rock Candy was a Baltimore group that also recorded as the Contemplations. This is a solid outing and quite similar to the Darling Dears' later version, but somehow it's nowhere near as transcendent.
*As I was preparing this post, I learned of a competing reissue of the single on the Cultures of Soul label. From what I can tell, both labels made a good faith effort to license the release, Orivious from Funky Heavy, Cultures of Soul from the record's producer, Alvin Lofton. I don't know who has the right of it, but I'm glad that someone is making these amazing songs more widely available.
Last week I played and talked about some of my favorite reissues from 2011.
To keep things varied, I tried to limit my selections to one song per release but I still played a frightening number of things reissued by the Numero Group. The talking was a little disjointed and rambling to my taste but otherwise I was really happy with what I played and how it flowed.
1. Bob & Gene – It’s Not What You Know... It's Who You Know (Ever-Soul 7") 2. Dave Hamilton – Soul Suite (V/A – Dave Hamilton's Detroit Soul) 3. Darondo – Gimme Some (Listen to My Song: The Music City Sessions) 4. Chucky Thurmon – Just a Man (V/A – Street Sounds From the Bay Area: Music City Funk & Soul Grooves 1971-75) 5. Aged In Harmony – You’re a Melody (Extended Disco) (V/A – Under the Influence Vol.1 Compiled By DJ Red Greg 6. Le'Chance – Get Down (V/A – True Soul: Deep Sounds From the Left of Stax Vol. 2) 7. Hot Pepper – Cancion Ritual (V/A – Real Sound of Chicago and Beyond) 8. Soki Ohale's Uzzi – Bisi’s Beat (V/A – Nigeria 70: Sweet Times - Afro-Funk, Highlife & Juju From 1970s Lagos) 9. Sroeng Santi – Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng (V/A – Thai? Dai!: The Heavier Side of the Luk Thung Underground) 10. Little Ed & the Soundmasters – It’s a Dream (Numero Group 7” box) 11. Neighb'rhood Childr'n – Long Years In Space (Long Years In Space) 12. Golden Grapes – Please Don't Bother Me Anymore (V/A – Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea's Shin Joong Hyun 1958-1974) 13. Oscar Hamod & the Majestics – No Chance Baby (No Chance Baby) 14. Index – Shock Wave (Black Album + Red Album + Yesterday & Today) 15. The Halleleuiah Chorus – I’ve Got to Find a Way (V/A – Eccentric Soul: The Nickel & Penny Labels) 16. Thomas East – Slipping Around (V/A - True Soul: Deep Sounds from the Left of Stax Volume 1) 17. The Four Mints – Endlessly (Numero Group 7”) 18. The Defaulters feat. Charles Hancock – Gentle Man (V/A – Pressed at Boddie) 19. Father's Children – Linda Movement (Who's Gonna Save the World) 20. Stone Coal White – You Know (S/T) 21. The Two Things In One – Walk On By (Together Forever: The Music City Sessions) 22. Kool and Together – Reaching Out (Original Recordings 1970-77) 23. Rob – Forgive Us All (Funky Rob Way) 24. The King James Version featuring King Solomon & Moses – He’s Forever (Amen) (V/A – Boddie Recording Company: Cleveland, Ohio) 25. The Soul Sensations - A Man That Is Not Free (V/A – The Music City Story) 26. Mike & the Censations – You’re Living a Lie (Don't Sell Your Soul) 27. El Rego – Ke Amon-Gbetchea (S/T) 28. O. C. Tolbert – All I Want Is You (Black Diamond) 29. Lloyd McNeill – Home Rule (Washington Suite) 30. Tino Contreras – Orfeon En Los Tambores (El Jazz Mexicano De Tino Contreras) 31. Jef Gilson Nonet feat. Jean-Louis Chautemps – Suite Pour San Remo: Ouverture (S/T) 32. Jef Gilson – Un Pas, Deux Pas, Cent Pas (S/T)
