We’ve made it to Part III of our trip through my hip-hop records1. Dr. Dre & Snoop, Pharcyde, ODB, Young MC… I’ve got all my singles lined up in order of tempo and I’ve got my LPs handy. The tempo continues its slow rise, starting here at 94 beats per minute and reaching just 96. There are a ton of tracks in this sweet spot here, and more to come.
Deep Cover starts us off. It was Dr. Dre’s first single after leaving NWA, and the first appearance of Snoop Dogg on record. The bass intro is instantly recognizable, and it sticks to NWA’s modus operandi of having no love for the police. Regardless, it’s a landmark track presaging Dre’s instant classic album The Chronic. The song was from the soundtrack of the movie Deep Cover, I movie I dug on Showtime as a youngster, featuring Lawrence Fishburne being cool and Jeff Goldblum being Jeff Goldblum.
We get a thematic shift moving to Pharcyde’s Runnin’, a great J-Dilla production with verses about having to stand up to your tormentors. Self-determination and resiliency are essential in this life. I stick with this instrumental to drop the second verse of Take You There by Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth. This is mainly about C.L.’s prowess. For the third verse I leave the Pharcyde beat and bring in the original, another stellar Pete Rock production. He has been one of the premier hip-hop producers for nearly thirty years. I’ve got a set of his instrumental tracks and it never fails to please. On the great producer tip, up next is DJ Premier’s Gangstarr with Positivity from 1989. This doesn’t quite have the distinct crate-dug sound of Premier’s best, and while I’ve never been too high on Guru’s monotone, this fits nicely here.
Staying in 1989 we find Young MC’s Principal’s Office. This is a Matt Dike & Mike Ross (who worked on Paul’s Boutique with the Dust Brothers) production that symbolizes for me the everlasting nature of crate-digging. I bought this cassette when it came out in ’89 and performed this song at my 4th grade talent show, but it took until 2014 before I discovered its root: Who Could Want More by Lee Michaels. My life is full of hip-hop samples that I’d recognize instantly if I heard the original, but the originals trickle into my life slowly over the decades. I was able to track this down on vinyl, so I use it here before dropping the Young MC single. For fun coming out of this I use some I Keep Forgettin’ (Michael McDonald’s foundation for Regulate, you know you know it) and Mary Jane Girls’ All Night Long. I’ve got the remix for Common’s The Light, but I don’t have the original, so I use Bobby Caldwell’s original vocals from Open Your Eyes as a prelude to Erykah Badu doing the hook for the remix. This mix also has an alternate vocal take by Common, and was used for Spike Lee’s Bamboozled soundtrack. I could write for days about Spike, or even about Bamboozled, but for now I’ll spare you so you can enjoy these nice rhymes about faith and work in relationships.
Shifting gears again, I bring a late-era EPMD track with guest vocals by Method Man, Redman and Lady Luck. There’s not a lot going on here thematically but the track is hot enough. Goodie Mob’s What It Ain’t (Ghetto Enuff) is also from 99/00, and features TLC trading verses with Cee-Lo, T-Mo, Khujo and Big Gipp about being unabashedly raw. We stay in the realm of community relations for Nuthin But A G Thang, another song whose video was blowing up when I first got MTV. Y’all know it.
I go back to the raw for ODB’s Shimmy Shimmy Ya. This is an all-timer with the shrill piano of RZA’s production and ODB (R.I.P.) in all his glory. “Wu-Tang killaaah beez on the swarm!” Since I have the acapella I throw it onto Grindin’, a Neptunes production for Clipse with a simple heavy beat that shows Pharell’s Prince influence (see Housequake and Sign O The Times). I can’t get enough of this beat, so I revisit it often. Clipse give us a metaphor-heavy take on their rock-slinging empire. “So much dough I can’t swear I won’t change.” ODB fits in here again with Baby C’mon, another track from his debut album that couldn’t belong to anyone else. We haven’t left Grindin behind yet; I use it as a bridge to Jeru The Damaja. Jeru could have fit right into the Wu-Tang Clan, and on a nice gritty Pete Rock beat.
Up next: Tupac, Biggie, Biz, Meth, and lots more.
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