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January 16, 2007
Audio. Dork Magazine Rootdown Show #3
Audio. Dork Magazine Rootdown Show #3: [Words & Music by Ken Peebles] Yow! It's another DM Rootdown for your listening pleasure. Show number three is a further tribute to the Godfather of Soul's influence. This edition features tunes with all James Brown samples.
With so many tunes to choose from it was hard to boil the show down to 5 simple tracks. This is by no means a top 5 list, just simply a few tracks I enjoy that would not exist without the funky soul of Sir James. You'll notice a couple of glaring omissions. One is there are no new tracks. I ended up deciding to stick to tracks from the JB sampling heyday ( late 80’s – early 90’s ) There are of course some great current uses and I highly recommend checking Where are They Now by Nas for an example. The other omission is the lack of a Funky Drummer track. To be honest because Funky Drummer has been sampled about gazillion plus one times I just couldn’t decide. Besides, that drum beat is so omnipresent you probably heard it while grocery shopping today. [Read a further breakdown after the jump]
Listen to Ken Peebles rock it on DM Rootdown Show Number 3 [Here]
1. Beatnuts Feat. Grand Puba - Are you ready
It’s always about the baseline and who couldn’t get hooked on this one. Da dum dum do doooo. This track encapsulates what’s so great about The Beatnuts' production. Unstoppable funky loops, great drums and well matched cuts. Are You Ready caught a lot of run in my walkman and all over London city.
2. Showbiz and AG - Soul Clap
You want your party to pump, then throw on the Soul Clap Back. Before I was able to transmit live through the internet and even before I had turntables I still loved playing DJ by manning the CD player at house parties. This track never failed to get people moving in a lull. Another example of a superstar baseline. The production could stop there, but it doesn’t and continues on with driving drums, out of control wailing horns and and undeniable old school party chants.
3.Ultramagnetic MC’s – Ease Back
Production being what it is today it’s hard to understand how ahead of the curve this record was when released. Ced Gee had some interesting drum patterns going on. This was one of those records that I missed when it was released and would continually hear about how amazing it was from different people in the hip hop community. For whatever reason I never checked it despite all the hype. It took, as it usually did a play at a record store to make me freak out, understand the hype and buy it on the same day.
4.Public Enemy – Welcome to the Terrordome
I had to include some PE. Aside from the fact PE borrowed from the JB sound innumerable times throughout their career one of the things they also did was really use vocal snippets as well. They were able to really capture the soul and spirit within JB’s voice on many tracks. You can’t really break down the insane bombsquad production into one piece but the influence of James is quit strong. PE is just one of those bands that changed everything. Much like the JB’s themselves these guys pushed the envelope and created what I can only describe as controlled funky chaos.
5. Big Daddy Kane – Wrath of Kane
Flow with the speed the wrath of Kane…This is defiantly that pose in front of the mirror and act like you’re the illest tune. I used to rock to this all the time wearing the fisherman hat pretending to be the flyest on the mic. The hard drums and the dizzying pace always keeps me on lock. For the kids this is what us grumpy old backpackers refer to as that raw. Another point of note. I love crazy scratches like everyone else, but I still enjoy the simplicity of Mister Cee’s scribble here. Let’s forget all that extra this year and get back to having flavor.
words and music by Ken Peebles.
+ Listen to Rootdown Show 002 [Here]
+ Listen to Rootdown Show 001 [Here]
Posted by taj at January 16, 2007 12:18 AM