Another mixtape that recorded for an official release, then did not happen. We even had an artwork! Ok, they probably just did not like hip house, and did not want to tell me. As if it would be a problem to tell that to anybody. I, of course, love it.
Artwork by Michael Kummermehr
K. Alexi Shelby And MCD-TA – Dig This King Sun – On The Club Tip Subsonic Two Vs. Nightmares On Wax – Addicted To Music Chubb Rock – Ya Bad Chubbs Precious – Definition Of A Track L.B. Bad – I Like To Move Doug Lazy – Let It Roll T.D.P. – Ladies Let’s Go Tuff Crew – What You Don’t Know Too Nice – I Git Minze Laurent X – It’s Magic
DJ Mink – Hey Hey Can U Relate Unique 3 – Weight For The Bass KC Flightt – Planet E White Knight – Keep It Movin’ Mix N Tel – Feel The Beat Shut Up And Dance – This Town Needs A Sheriff Fast Eddie – Hip House This I’D Jazz – Good To Go Separate Minds – We Need Somebody K.A. Posse – Shake S-B-M & MC Tunes – Back To Attack
In discussion with Trevor Jackson on “Illmatic” by Nas (1994).
Can you remember the way you were introduced to “Illmatic”? Was it love at first sight?
Hip-hop was the main music I listened to in the early ‘90s. I devoured every new hip-hop release that came out. I’d been aware of Nas since 1991 when he guest-starred on a Main Source track called “Live at the Barbecue”, which was produced by Large Professor, one of my favorite producers. He was incredible on that. It was a great time for hip-hop. So many incredible hip-hop albums came out between ’91 and ’94. In 1992, Nas put out a single on Ruffhouse called “Halftime”, which was a track from the soundtrack of Zebrahead. That single totally blew me away. It still is one of my favorite hip-hop singles of all time. By that time, people in the hip-hop world were really aware of Nas, so when the album dropped in 1994, it wasn’t love at first sight, to be honest. It was a surprise.
You were expecting something big?
Yeah. All the real hip-hop heads were, not only because he was an incredible MC, but also because of the producers on the album, which were the cream of the crop at the time.
How were all the luminaries who played a part in the process apparent on the album? How would you characterize their input?
The thing about hip-hop at that time—which was very different than it is now—everyone strove to have their own sound. Nobody wanted to sound like anybody else. Probably more than any other music, people who were into hip-hop bought a lot of records because of the producer rather than the artist or the MC. It was quite unique.
On Illmatic, Nas worked with DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor and Q-Tip. Even though they were all from New York, they all had their own distinctive sound. Premier usually only took one loop, but he could do something incredible and really simple with one or two bars. Pete Rock was more complex and slightly more soulful. Large Professor had really amazing basslines, and Q-Tip was still deep, dark and street, but slightly more abstract. It was almost like The Avengers: Hulk, Thor, Captain America and Iron Man all coming together on one team. I don’t want to take anything away from Nas, who’s an amazing MC in his own right, but he always needed a great beat behind him. And they were the best at the time.
It’s kind of astonishing that there were so many different people involved, yet the album is pretty coherent.
The thing is, all these guys are from New York, and New York rap was all sample-based. It was pretty raw, and so even though these guys all had their own distinctive sound, they all hung out together; they were all friends.
That’s true. As you said, you go a long way back with hip-hop, and you probably heard a lot of classic albums. What makes “Illmatic” so special?
All I know is that I never get tired of it. A week doesn’t go by when I don’t listen to the whole album. It’s a short, too—it’s only got ten tracks on it, which was not typical, as a lot of albums used to hold 20 or 30 tracks. In contrast, Illmatic is really tight and focused. I love every track apart from one. I just think there’s something about Nas’ hunger to succeed on that record—I felt like you can hear that he came off the street into a vocal booth and just rhymed. It really has that immediacy and that hunger; you can hear it in his lyrics and you can hear it in his voice, and for me, it’s 1000 percent believable. I understand every word of it he says. Maybe it sounds silly, but it feels like he’s talking to me directly. His voice is just so direct. There’s something about that album. It was a point in time. So many different things combined to make it a special record.
It was his debut album, and it’s still hailed as one of the most important hip-hop albums of all time. That’s obviously quite a burden as well, but it’s really fascinating that he achieved this as his first album.
When it first came out, it wasn’t a success, though. It had critical success, but it didn’t sell. It took a bit of time to catch on. Looking at it now, for me, it’s always been a thing about Jay-Z or Nas. If you ask me, Nas would wipe the floor with Jay-Z in terms of rap skills. But Jay-Z is the superstar today, not Nas. Nas is still the rapper’s rapper. Also, sadly, he probably hasn’t made a record quite as good as Illmatic—not a whole album, anyway. So, if you want to talk about the greatest record of all time, many people today won’t say Illmatic. People will say it’s Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, or they’ll say Kanye’s it’s 808s & Heartbreak. For me, Illmatic is a benchmark, but I’m the older generation. I don’t know if the new generation really understands. What they perceive as being “good rap music” now is totally different, as is rap music itself.
Just in terms of the production, hip-hop—especially from the East Coast—was much more sample-based. I think that kind of vanished over the years.
The other thing is, in a weird way, that album marked a beginning, too. Before, you’d have one producer producing the whole thing. From what I remember, Illmatic was the first time so many esteemed producers all produced on the same album. That kind of changed things, because after that, people started getting loads of different producers to do an album. It’s not like they said, “Let’s get Premier or Pete Rock because they’ll sell millions of records.” They got those people because they really worked with Nas and they sounded right. But the hip-hop environment changed after that; people lost their unique sound. Everyone started to sound the same. Read the rest of this entry »
I must admit that I did not buy that much Drum and Bass in its mid 90s heyday. I simply loved too much of it, thus it seemed purchasing what I loved would drain my budget for good, as there was enough already going on elsewhere I needed to keep track of. I bought a whole lot of mixtapes though, trying to devour the most and best of it as it was intended to shine. I applied the same pattern with Dubstep as well later on. There were just too many interesting records to add the them to the shopping list I already had week in week out. I went to nights, bought some mixtapes again, kept in touch. But then some day 5 years ago, I was going up the stairs to Hard Wax, and DJ Pete was booming this over the store PA. With every step up I became convinced more and more that this was not like anything I heard in either Drum and Bass and Dubstep so far, yet it sounded like it belonged to both, but it had very determined sound aesthetics more linked in my mind to Techno as well. The half time tempo had me confused at first. Of course you could always mix Drum And Bass or Dubstep with slower paced downtempo tracks, but this particular track seemed to be built for the purpose, only the other way round. Its beats were really heavy, yet agile. It’s atmosphere dark, yet totally engaging. The vocals floating above, adding still to the austerity. I asked what it was, and bought it instantly. There will be a time you will drop this, and it will do serious damage, I thought. I was right. I also fucked up my budget by extending my purchasing schemes to this area, for years to come. Sometimes, you just have to give in.
Dark Side Rhythm Tracks – Homey’s House Container – Acclimator Young Male – Black Satin Fan DJ Sotofett – There’s Gotta Be A Way (Vision Of Love Club Mix) Marcellis – Workshop 16 B1 Mzungu – Too Hot Durant – Vigo’s Jones Breach & Dark Sky – The Click Doubleheart – Grasso Terrence Dixon – Horizon Area – Bourbon Skies (St. Petersburg Three-Four Blues Remix By DJ Sprinkles) Sleeparchive – Diagnosis Oh, Yoko – Seashore (Sprinkles’ Ambient Ballroom)
Man könnte an dieser Stelle etliche wundervolle Platten bejubeln, die Victor Simonelli im Alleingang oder zusammen mit Tommy Musto Anfang der 90er gemixt und produziert hat. Zu dieser Zeit war er schon ein Veteran der New Yorker Clubmusik, die beeindruckende Liste von exklusiven Mixtape-Dokumenten auf seiner Webseite belegt umfassend mit welchen Legenden der Jahre vor und nach dem Discokollaps er bestens bekannt war. In seiner alten Nachbarschaft in Brooklyn hat man jedoch sehr unterschiedliche Lehren aus diesen Lehrjahren gezogen. Der an New York Freestyle geschulte, sehr samplefreudige Ansatz weiter Teile seines House-Bekanntenkreises scheint seinen Prämissen nicht entsprochen zu haben, denn seine Arbeiten waren geradezu mustergültige Beispiele für die Besinnung auf das Wesentliche. Eine Stimme, ein Groove, ein Dub, und alles auf gleicher Augenhöhe. Seine Beats waren prägnant, aber nicht zu aufdringlich, und seine Arrangements waren beneidenswert strukturiert, da sie nur mit wenigen aber dafür zwingenden durchgehenden Melodien soviel federnde Fahrt aufnahmen, dass dazu nur noch wenige punktgenaue Details hinzukommen mussten, alles andere hätte das geschmeidige Gleichgewicht als sinnlose Ornamente zerstört. Und wie einst Burt Bacharch mit Dionne Warwick, hatte Simonelli mit Joi Cardwell eine kongeniale Interpretin gefunden, die vergleichbar sophisticated, manierismenfrei und ungospelig seiner Musik den entscheidenden Assoziationsmehrwert und die Wahrhaftigkeit verleihen konnte, die sich aus dem entspannten Wesen ihres Gesangsstils im Kopf potenzierte. Joi Cardwell klang immer sexy, weil sie sich niemals an unrealistischen musikalischen und inhaltlichen Vorgaben und Konstellationen verhob. Und so ist “Goodbye” vielleicht der tröstendste Song, zu dem man den Part des Prellbocks einer ungleichen Beziehung wegtanzen kann. Der Moment der Erkenntnis ist gekommen, es gibt ein letztes Fazit, und dann wird endgültig klar Schiff gemacht:
“So here it is 4 a.m., and I’ve been thinking about all the things I can tell you. But I’m a lady and I’m always gonna be a lady. So I keep it simple. Goodbye.”
Miss Joi Cardwell – Goodbye (The Victor Simonelli Remixes) (Eightball Records, 1992)
Die tanzbare Seite von Library Music wurde ja schon mal ab den mittleren 90ern im Zuge des damaligen Easy Listening-Hypes aufgedeckt, etwa von dem KPM-Sampler auf Strut und diversen halbseidenen Compilations aus Italien. Jetzt hat die anhaltende Begeisterung für das Kosmische wieder die Tore geöffnet, Raymond Scott ist wieder wer, und in den Archiven der Fließband-Studiotüftler der 60er bis 80er sollte auch noch zur Genüge Material abzugreifen sein, um bis zur nächsten Obskuritäten-Baisse Spezialwissen zu streuen. Nur machen den Job hier jetzt nicht mehr etwa The Karminsky Experience oder andere Zeitgenossen, sondern die Franzosen Alexis Le-Tan und Jess aus dem Tigersushi-Umfeld. Was sie zusammengetragen haben, klingt ähnlich wie zur ersten Renaissance: die funky Seite von Muzak, Auftragsdisco, sowohl einsetzbar um deine eingeweihten Freunde mit dem nächsten Checker-Mixtape zu überrumpeln, als auch als Hintergrundmusik für retro-futuristische Designideen. Das Genre bringt eine gewisse Formatfreude und Homogenität schon mit sich, aber diese Zusammenstellung ist trotzdem durchgehend treffsicher ausgeführt. Erfreulicherweise gibt es auch ein paar ziemlich gestörte Moog-Experimente, Flash Rock-Versuche und auch ein paar echte verhinderte Floorfiller zu hören. Vermutlich rutschen deren Komponisten schon bald wieder in den Schatten zurück, da heißt es zugreifen.
Die Buddelaristokraten aus NYC nach dem Gipfeltreffen mit ihrem japanischem Pendant DJ Muro erneut mit einer Mix CD auf BBE. Das wird auch in Zukunft so bleiben, die beiden haben für fünf Ausgaben „Off Track“ unterschrieben. Vormals hießen ihre regelmäßigen Archivbegehungen „On Track“ und waren als Breaks, Scratches und sonstige Schnipsel auf mehrere Mixtapes verteilt. In diesem Format werden die Funde respektvoller angegangen, erst ausspielen, dann crossfaden, hier und da ein sachter Edit. Kon gibt den funky Dance Cop, Amir den funky Jazz Cop. Beide wissen wie man ein Set strukturiert und dabei stilistisch variabel bleibt. Der genauere Blick auf die vertretenen Künstler macht der Reputation entsprechend wenig Sinn, man wurde ja nicht als Koryphäen des Offensichtlichen gebucht. Ebenso kryptisch: der Bronxbezug aus dem Titel. Mal sehen ob jetzt die anderen Boroughs nachfolgen, und wie sich das vielleicht unterscheidet. Und fast schade, dass die Jungs nicht mit der gleichen Expertise etwa No Wave oder obskure Samplehouseplatten erledigen, New York City hätte da ja noch einige andere Sammelgebiete in der Hinterhand.
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