Cram Sampling Rebels Without a Pause: A Classic Age in Hiphop Music

"Watching the dancers get down every night [in the mid-1970s], [DJ Kool] Herc saw that their limbs were loosest during the 'breaks,' or isolated drum parts, when the band pulled out and gave the drummer some. He wondered: Could you prolong the break? Could you make an endless break? By cutting the record back and forth between two records during the critical drum solo, Herc inadvertantly invented the "breakbeat"-- two seconds of feverish climax looped eternally, the point where Steve Miller turns into Steve Reich, a limitless pulse to make B-boys go ga-ga night after night. This became the foundation of Hip hop music."  

Christopher R. Weingarten, It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back (2010) : This book in the 33 1/3 series posits that the album in the title, the 1988 Hiphop album qua album breakthrough, along with De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and the Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique (both 1989), represent an album aesthetic peak, a triumvirate, in Hiphop history. One particular relatively early culmination of what DJ Kool Herc started. And, crucially, a brief window of creative cultural opportunity. New relatively cheap sampling technology emerges in the mid-1980s and falls into the hands of urban B-boys like Hank Shocklee, "sound master" in the Bomb Squad; competing and hustling against a bunch of other sound system collectives operating out of the boroughs of NYC since Sugar Hill's "Rapper's Delight" (1979). Increasingly Wild Style sampling experiments like the album classics above ensue. It Takes a Nation crams dozens of samples into a single song, over a hundred samples synthesizing Black soul music into BLM before BLM; a monumentally hard rock funky epic Black Power statement and soundtrack. Performative as a sensationalized "Black CNN." Game changer. Then in '89 the Turtles sued De La Soul for copyright infringement. And, more conclusively, in '91 Gilbert O'Sullivan sued Biz Markie for ripping off his pop hit "Alone Again (Naturally)" and overnight making albums like It Takes a Nation or 3 Fee High or Paul's Boutique became prohibitively expensive and so practically impossible. It's a good story. Maybe not the whole story in that experimental electronic music based on sampling continues, Wu-Tang, Trip Hop, DJ Shadow, The Avalanches, etc, but cram sampling never has the same populist Black pop chart source and reach as it did between Eric B & Rakim's "You Know You Got Soul" (1987) and De La Soul is Dead (1991). For me, personally, inspired by The Clash's political bombast as a raw youth, It Takes a Nation was the Black punk rock I'd been waiting for. I Felt the Noize. "Armageddon, it's been in effect, go get a late pass. Step." 

"Supersonic," JJ Fad (1988)

 Sometimes I think Dr. Dre is The Chronic (1992), and his G-Funk was always leaning too much on the P-Funk, so to speak. But here is some of his production work from 1988, J.J. Fad's "Supersonic," an old school Boom bap girl group sound produced to perfection; reached 22 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Duly noted in collaboration with Dj Yella and the Arabian Prince but, at any rate, it is Dre with a crafty minimalist model of early '80s rap and NOT The Chronic. The J.J. Fad trio look underage but they show up later in the video as older ladies, appearing proud of the legacy of their song, "Supersonic," as they should be. They still perform too or did on the internet as middle age looking ladies, a girl group trio having fun on stage at a karaoke bar. I'd just arrived in Seattle in 1988 and I at first thought J.J. Fad were from Seattle and this was a promotional number for the local NBA team the Seattle SuperSonics, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. I could swear the song was used in Sonic promotions around that time but I can't find any evidence for that on the internet. At any rate, the hiphop-ya-don't-stop gleeful nonsense purity of "Supersonic" bubbles over with the vitality of "Rapper's Delight" and all the best rapping in the early 1980s; heretofore to be known as Hip Hop or rap before RunDMC or RBRD. Sugar Hill, Tommy Boy, Enjoy! Turning out the disco on the block, plug and play, turntables, sampling, drum machines, the rhyming is bold, seductive, full of braggadocio and swagger and often very funny. Turns out J.J. Fad were really from LA and "Supersonic" an early Dr. Dre production masterpiece, if late to the RBRD party and still refining the retrosheen that would become his bread and butter. "Supersonic" is a Hip Hop classic, anyway you slice it. J.J. Fad, MC J.B. (Juana), Baby-D (Dania), and Sassy C (Michelle), on the mic, 1988. Party in the House. Meanwhile, the SuperSonics, Bernie Bickerstaff's version of the '88 Sonics, finished 3rd in the Pacific Division that year and traded away Scottie Pippen for Olden Polynice in the draft. We need those Secret Base Dorktown guys to do one of their historical docs on the Seattle SuperSonics. Even so JJ Fad's "Supersonics" were a positive force vibe with that Supersonic team in '88, X-Man, Michael Cage, Dale Ellis, Nate McMillan, Derrick McKey, Avery Johnson, so much potential on that team! Not to be. But there will always be JJ Fad's "Supersonic."  

"For The Lover in You," True Mathematics (1991)

 

In a way this is just another golden era hiphop song about "gold diggers" but True Mathematics gets all philosophical about it: "When the material girl in you comes out will the lover in you see what the love is about?" And, crucially, the funk is sharp and bouncy as it could be. TM is Kenny Houston, sidekick on some Public Enemy albums. Surprised he doesn't rap more as he gives as good as he gets from the Bomb Squad: Carl Ryder (aka Chuck D), Hank Shocklee, and Eric "Vietnam" Sadler. I like the original but TM's version is popping; similar funk vintage to Young MC's "Bust a Move" (1989) or EPMD'S "You Gots To Chill" (1988). Hiphop or rap music is, basically, funk made with turntables, a mixer, a synth/sampler, a drum machine, and a rapping DJ or MC. If you like funky beats and pop hooks this cannot miss. In a classic hiphop persona, the disinterested observer of human relations, "some guys will use you/some guys will love you," TM raps, "But I'm neither one/just here to observe."  

The original comes from Shalamar's 1980 album Three for Love: 

Post-Punk Protest Music

"Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair," PJ Harvey (1991): 

"Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair." 

Actually, Harvey calls her song "Sheela-Na-Gig," after carved figurines of a naked woman with an exaggerated vulva, architectural grotesques found on cathedrals, castles, and other buildings throughout Europe in the middle ages. Love the esoteric feminist history but had to look it up, of course. I was originally slow on the uptake with Harvey when she first came out in the early 1990s. Both Dry ('92) and Rid of Me ('93) first struck me as too much like Patti Smith. That same melodramatic shamanistic banshee vocalizing thing. Which was such a rock snobby take, no doubt, but for the life of me now I can't hear what a fuss I was making. I mean, sure, there's a vocal styling resemblance but Harvey is way more Sturm und Drang, and way more intensely sexual. Being her own person, like Smith, the power in that, is what Harvey shares most with Smith. Don't try to pigeonhole them too much. They will arrive in their own time and on their own terms. Maybe Harvey was a little bit to the '90s what Smith was to the '70s, rockers, sui generis strong women art rockers. Salute. 

"Leave the Capitol," The Fall (1981): The Fall at an early peak; from The Slates EP. In a fitful nightmare I imagine Mark E. Smith taking down Grump in a battle rap royale, jabbing him with his rat a tat tat militant nonsense, dancing around the Fat Bastard spastically. Never being touched. The TKO'd G crumpling with Smith leering over him, pointing a finger at him, taunting him with the hook here, "Then you know in your brain/LEAVE THE CAPITOL!/EXIT THE ROMAN SHELL!" Over and over. The dream look is Clockwork Orange. No doubt the obtuse ranting lends itself to such fantasy because Smith is a little Trumpy; like one of Elvis Costello's "Two Little Hitlers." Apparently, the song is about Smith wanting to get out of London, to get away from the pop press hype. Post-punk revenge pop. 

(1988): 

"And the mercy seat is waiting

And I think my head is burning

And in a way I'm yearning

To be done with all this measuring of proof.

An eye for an eye

And a tooth for a tooth

And anyway I told the truth

And I'm not afraid to die."