đ§
IDK why this seminal L.A. hip-hop quartet doesn't get more love/respect.
When I listen to this track I hear Dilla's influence straight away -- he samples Stan Getz's "Saudade Vem Correndo", loops his sax parts, and then drops a snippet of Run-DMC's "Rock Box" on top of it for good measure.
Artists from Wiz Khalifa to UNKLE to Juice Wrld to JPEFMafia have used it in some form.
And it's appeared in "8 Mile," "Entourage," "New York Undercover" and "Big Daddy," among other shows.
It's a very unique, L.A. (not 2Pac or NWA's L.A.) take on alternative hip-hop (which De La Soul, another Dilla-produced group, was also mining). I think they were incredibly influential for an act that had really only one bona-fide "hit" and barely went gold once during their active career.
P.S.: I'm pretty certain that the slang phrase "low key" is invented here (it's 1995, BTW).
"Amani, Booty Brown Fatlip and Slimkid Tre/ we do it this way, we do it this way."
Sep 21, 2024
Related Recs
I don't know why Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede don't get more love when the subject of "golden age hip hop" comes up.
Dudes were from the heart of it all, the Boogie Down (in fact their producer Ski Beatz lived in the same building -- 1520 Sedgwick -- that Kool Herc had once lived in back in the day).
They invented their own lingo -- luchini = loot, jiggy vines = 70s style threads they were pioneering around the same time Digable and the Beasties were dressing that way, sugar dimes = hotties, Amaeret-tah = their beverage of choice, Hollywood = high life, etc.
They were obsessed with the 70s films Uptown Saturday Night and Cooley High, this pretty much formed the basis of their entire steez. The link here is to "Luchini" which is their anthem/best known track.
I've got a lot of time for this album three decades down the line. Dig the Marvin Gaye album cover pastiche too.
Apr 16, 2024
When these kids first came straight outta Long Island in 1989, there was no such thing as âbackpacker hip-hopâ or even really an âUndergroundâ
Something this eccentric and funny (FBOW, hip-hop skits started here) didnât even have an audience. It had to be built.
Posdnuos, Trugoy (RIP) and DJ Maseo created a whole new world with producer Prince Paul that we are still exploring today.
Give âem their flowers đ
Three Feet High and Rising
De La Soul Is Dead
Buhloone Mindstate
Stakes Is High
ââCatch me breathing on planes where the gangsterâs outdated/ Fuck being hard Posdnuos is complicated.â
This shit is GOLDEN. đ¶đ§
Feb 6, 2024
Sometimes theres an implicit stank put on my city; on the East Coast thereâs a kind of New York Supremacy. People think of Baltimore as a failed state backwater, a curiosity at best. It can be tough living here sometimes, to be sure. But Bmore has, however, easily the most vibrant, exciting, original, diverse and ambitious music and art scene of any small city in the East and from what I can tell, in the entirety of the country. At any rate, this breakout hit from Tate Kobang is quintessential Baltimore popular art. The style of minimalism with hard pulsing snare claps and the parsimonious use of sampled groove bits (which, thatâs all Bmore Club style, distinctly), obviously the lyrics too and the settings of the video which tell a story without telling a story, itâs genuinely one of my favorite hip-hop songs, and you gotta watch the video.
1d ago
Top Recs from @coreydubrowa
Hey tyler hopefully this doesnât violate some PI.FYI golden rule
But after nearly two years of writing, editing and arguing, my book about the EP is coming out in May and can be preordered here:
https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/
The book is about the origins, history and cultural impact of the EP since these little objects first started coming out in the 50s.
Over 50 of my music biz friends then helped me shape the list and review the top 200 ever released, according to us (ha).
For those of you who are into this kind of geekery/snobbery, I canât wait to hear what you think. A labor of love, as all books are! â€ïž
Mar 27, 2024
âSongs Of a Lost Worldâ coming to a goth listening station near you Nov 1 đ€
The fr FW Me Friday the 13th the world was looking for
Sep 14, 2024
I will fail to explain just how much this band meant to me in the 90s.
So I will borrow from AV Club who did a fine job of distilling it:
âUnwound is the best band of the â90s. Not just because of how prolific, consistent, and uncompromising it was, but because of how perfectly Unwound nested in a unique space between some of the most vital forms of music that decade: punk, post-rock, indie rock, post-hardcore, slow-core, and experimental noise. That jumble of subgenres doesnât say much; in fact, it falls far short of what Unwound truly synthesized and stood for. Unwound stood for Unwound. But in a decade where most bands were either stridently earnest or stridently ironic, Unwound wasnât stridently anything. It was only itself. In one sense Unwound was the quietest band of the â90s, skulking around like a nerdy terror cell. In another sense it was the loudest, sculpting raw noise into contorted visions of inner turmoil and frustration.â
R.I.P. Vern Rumsey.
This is their finest song, from their finest album.
I really canât say enough about the sheer bloody minded genius of this group. đ€
Mar 23, 2024