It took me a minute to post this up but here’s my latest mix. It’s got just a jazzy flow to it. Overall I feel it is a decent mix. Let me know what you think about it. The tracklisting is below. Listen to it on iTunes or on SoundCloud
Jazz Con Bazz - Da Huzle
People Under The Stairs - Suite For Beaver (Part 1)
Tony D - Piano Grand
Smoke No Bones - Lyrics and Vibes
Ta’Raach - Baaby
L-Fudge - Liquid (Instrumental)
Mr. Scruff - How Sweet It Is
Mass Influence - A Yo! Atlanta Ya On
UMOD - U Better Recognise
DJ Numark & DJ Pomo - The Way I Think
Today is more about a lesson than an album review. The dusty crate digging funk and soul lesson of today is you can almost judge a good album by its cover. To illustrate my point we’ll take this cover Tom Brock’s “I Love You More and More.” Now let’s take a minute and conjure up an image.
Let’s say that you were the smoothest cat at the bar and you actually picked up a beautiful young lady. (We all know that has never happened to you, but just make pretend for a moment that it has.) You are really attracted to this girl and you want to impress the panties off of her. Now you bring her back to your place, and you decide to get a little more comfortable and put on your pimp ass smoking jacket, and open up a fresh bottle of Columbia Crest Two Vines Merlot. You pour the lady and yourself a glass and sit down and begin to tell her how you save kitties stuck in trees, cried at The Notebook, and how much you enjoy John Mayer’s music. Now you aren’t jumping the gun to get in her drawers because you are smooth like that and want to get her so wound up that one touch from you will send her into ecstasy. Got that image in your head? Okay good. What does it look like? Chances are it looks like this cover here. And chances are this is the closest that you and I will ever get to that situation.
Anyway, this is Tom Brock’s finest and only album. It’s filled with beautiful strings, driving bass lines and rhythmic beats, with funky up-tempo rhythms. Tom Brock’s vocals on this album are top notch. Then again, what would you expect from a protégé of the walrus of love himself, Barry White. Oh that was never mentioned? That’s right Tom Brock was mentored by White himself. In fact, Barry produced this album. I am actually very surprised that this album never went anywhere. With it being produced by Barry, and just the great soul that is on this album, I’m just truly surprised that this wasn’t an instant classic.
Now for the juicy details of this album. We all know Jay-Z, well “Girls, Girls, Girls” came from this album here. Also, nearly every track on this album has sample qualities. In fact, I’m producing music for a few artists and already four tracks of there album were sampled from this. If you are a crate digger you must find this album.
Tom Brock – I Love You More And More
Track listing:
1. Have A Nice Week End Baby
2. The Love We Share Is The Greatest Of Them All
3. there’s nothing in this world that can stop me from loving you
This is one of the most legendary funk albums of the 70’s. It’s one of those albums that when you find it you will become the envy of any crate digger out there. And thanks to Clay at 52.5 Records he was able to land a copy of this album for me. So you can send your hate emails to me whenever. Anyway, the Skull Snaps cut just this one album and it’s blend of hard breaks, soulful vocals, and soaring grooves will continue to make this album a must for any collector for years to come.
I only heard the track “It’s a New Day.” prior to the whole album. It is a phemominal mix of soul and funk, not to mention the opening break has been sampled by so many rap artists. In fact, some record collectors swear up and down this track gave the rhythm for nearly all the early 90’s rap and has been credited as the most sampled drum beat in all rap music.
The album as a whole is just this incredible ride through a funk and soul rollercoaster! After listening to the first side of the album, I was blown away by each of the tracks. The haunting vocals, and the breaks were just insane! I got up and flipped the record over to the B-Side and the ride did not stop. The first song that comes at you is “I’m Your Pimp” and you would swear that should have been used in a Dolemite movie. With lyrics like, “I wear my hat to the side….I walk with a limp…” How could it have not been in that movie?
This is one of the best albums that I have ever heard. This goes to show that digging does pay off, and to stay away from the Top 40. You don’t find real soul like this in music today. This album is a perfect example of early 70’s funk and will continue to be a collector’s item. In fact you can only find re-issues on Ebay and for the actual album, good luck trying to find one under triple digits.
Tracks A1 My Hang Up Is You (4:02)
A2 Having You Around (4:30)
A3 Didn’t I Do It To You (3:15)
A4 All Of A Sudden (3:23)
A5 It’s A New Day (3:04)
B1 I’m Your Pimp (4:03)
B2 I Turn My Back On Love (2:45)
B3 Trespassing (4:03)
B4 I’m Falling Out Of Love (2:46)
Not only is this a great album to chill and listen to, it is one of Grover Washington’s most sampled albums. In fact, I believe every song has been sampled on this album.
The title track “Feels So Good” was sampled by Gangstarr’s very own Guru in “Slicker than Most.”
The track “Moonstreams” was sampled by DMX in his track “Slippin.”
“Knucklehead” is constantly sampled over and over again. Just listen to it and the list of songs will build in your head.
And finally last but certainly not least, Hydra. Who has not sampled this track? We’ve got A Tribe Called Quest who sampled the drums for their track “Check the Rhyme.” The Artifacts also did this on “Wrong Side of the Tracks.” Big Daddy Kane used it in “Daddy’s Home,” and Biggie used it in the album version of “One More Chance.”
Quite possibly the worst, if not one in the top 5 worst rap songs of all time. In fact it is so bad, that if you were to Google it. It doesn’t even come up. Take a listen if you dare. Yes it’s about a Nissan truck. It’s terrible I’m done talking about it.
P.S. The flip side has an instrumental version for all those who want to remix it out there.
I picked up this while browsing through the turntable lab website. I have to admit that this has been my guilty pleasure listen of 2008. I would sneak tracks of “The Bake Sale” into my sets and watch the crowd go nuts. Most of them didn’t know who it was, which made it even better! I have to admit that I did not hear a single radio station around the area drop a single track from this album, nor did any City Paper review. This album seems to me that it was one of the more over-looked albums of last year.
From day to day it gets more and more difficult to find real hip hop elements in today’s rap music. For the most part lyrics help. While there are plenty of artists that won’t rap about bitches, bling, guns, and violence many of them don’t have the means to. With bitches, bling, guns and violence off the list many of them rap about how they’re never going to rap about bitches, bling, guns and violence. As if they deserve some sort of metal for not killing anyone. The Cool Kids take a different approach to that and seemingly sum themselves up in the first few minutes of the album by stating, “Come check the noise, it’s the new black version of the Beastie Boys.”
Now hearing that lyric, and being a huge Beastie Boys fan, I guess I should be thinking. “How dare they have the gonads to say something like that.” Actually, that lyric got me to pay attention to the rest of the album. I am very happy that I did. These guys really are paying homage to the golden days of rap and do a good job at making the ideas of that time relevant with today’s music scene. Each tune is relatively catchy with good party rhymes. No lyrics about bling, no lyrics about Bentleys, none of that stuff. After listening to the intros to tracks on the album I feel like getting my white ass on the dance floor.
However, I do have to be a purist and say that there is very little funk and soul sampling in this album and that they have no DJs that they are rhyming for. Which stops this album from being a 10 for me. The reason for this is that they are paying homage to the golden age of rap in nearly every track on this album, but they excluded a main element of Hip Hop. So it’s almost like they are talking the talk but not walking the walk.
Don’t let that stop you from adding this album to your collection though. If you want a good party album, this is a good choice. DJs if you aren’t dropping tracks from this already, you need to be up on this level. The tracks are solid.
Track Listing:
1. What Up Man
2. One Two
3. Mikey Rocks
4. 88
5. What It Is
6. Black Mags
7. A Little Bit Cooler
8. Gold And A Pager
9. Bassment Party
10. Jingling
I was going through some old funk albums this weekend, looking for the perfect beat as usual, and I ran across this old gem that I semi-forgot how some of the tracks sounded. So, I loaded it up on the decks and took a listen. From what I understand Kool and the Gang’s self released album was an unexpected success. After listening to their first single on the album, also self titled, it’s not hard to understand why this album was a success. The single climbed both pop and R&B charts at the time, reaching #19 on the R&B and #59 on the pop. Subsequent singles “The Gang’s Back Again,” “Let the Music Take Your Mind,” and “Funky Man,” followed and moved steadily up the charts. However, there were still many notable tracks such as “Raw Hamburger,” and “Chocolate Buttermilk.” This record is a total ruckus to listen to and contains the trademark styles of the band before the late disco era: smooth melodies, brassy horns, and funky-as-all-hell drumming. This album has stood up to the test of time and has been sampled by many early rap artists and is considered a classic in the eyes of the stoic vinyl collector and breaks from this album still surface in b-boy competitions across the world. I have listed the artists that sampled from this album below:
Song: Give it Up
A Tribe Called Quest - “Scenario”
Beastie Boys - “Professor Booty”
Compton’s Most Wanted - “Compton 4 Life”
Cypress Hill - “The Phuncky Feel One”
Deee-Lite - “Deee-Lite Theme”
Eric B and Rakim - “Don’t Sweat the Technique”
GangStarr - “Take a Rest”
Greg Osby - “3-D Lifestyles”
Lionrock - “Morning Will Come When I’m Not Ready”
MC Brains - “Everybody’s Talkin’ about MC Brains”
NWA - “Real Niggaz”
Organized Konfusion - “Intro”
Uptown - “Dope on Plastic”
X-Clan - “Shaft’s Big Score”
Song: Chocolate Buttermilk
Chubb Rock - “The Night Scene”
Eric B and Rakim - “Keep ‘em Eager to Listen”
Eric B and Rakim - “No Omega”
Heavy D - “Let it Flow”
Marley Marl - “Simon Says”
Masta Ace - “Simon Says”
Pete Rock & CL Smooth - “Straighten it Out”
Special Ed - “Ready 2 Attack”
SL2 - “On A Ragga Tip”
Stetsasonic - “The Hip Hop Band”
Style - “Set the Mood”
YBT - “Proud to Be Black”
Song: Let the Music Take Your Mind
Beastie Boys - “Lay it on Me”
Boss - “Process of Elimination”
Ice Cube - “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”
Ice T - “Freedom of Speech”
Jungle Brothers - “What’s Going On?”
Ultramagnetic MCs - “MC Champion”
Song: Breeze & Soul
Dr. Octagon - “Bear Witness”
Jimmy Jay - “Les Cool Session”
