The return of DST

I was over at the Spine Magazine site grabbing Chairman Mao's new boogie-funk podcast (you should, too!) and saw that there's a new song from De La Soul:



De La Soul: "The Return of DST" (?, 2010)

De La Soul has always excelled at the respectful nod to rap music's past and here they revive one of the illest old school rap routines , Grandmixer DST's synthesizer routine from the 1982 First Annual Black History Jam at Bronx River Center:



Grandmixer DST & the Infinity Rappers: Live at Bronx River Center, 1982 (Music of Life, 1992)

For 9 minutes, DST plays a vicious interpolation of the Exorcist theme-- probably the evilest synth part this side of Doug E. Fresh's "Phantasm" rip-- and riffs on some other songs (Gwen McCrae's "Funky Sensation", Junior's "Mama Used to Say", the theme from Close Encounters, etc.) while the Infinity Rappers hype the crowd and do some chants (King Floyd's "Feel Like Dynamite", what!).

DST also recorded a studio version of this for Celluloid, "The Grandmixer Cuts It Up". The distance between the live version and that is roughly the same as the gap between the live version of "Flash to the Beat" and the defanged studio take that Sugarhill released later. Still, I'm glad there's video of that version:


Grandmixer DST & the Infinity Rappers: "The Grandmixer Cuts It Up" (Celluloid, 1982)

Back to De La Soul for a second, they did a song last year for a video game, which is usually where rappers relegate material that's too uninspired even to serve as filler on their shitty commercial albums. Evidently not understanding this practice, De La made a really good song instead.