I’m continuing my tour through hip-hop’s most classic breakbeats with “Ashley’s Roachclip” by the Soul Searchers. The drum break at 3:30 is one of those hip-hop workhorses, like “Impeach The President” and “The Funky Drummer” and “Apache.” It seems like it’s always been there. The Soul Searchers were led by guitarist Chuck Brown, known in [...]
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Also tagged breakbeats, chuck brown, emf, eric b & rakim, funk, go-go, milli vanilli, nelly, nice & smooth, pm dawn, sampling, soul searchers, spandau ballet
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If I had to pick a single track to explain to an alien or time traveler what hip-hop is and why it’s so awesome, I think I’d pick “Nas Is Like.” Nas has a great flow full of powerful imagery, but what makes this track for me is DJ Premier’s production. It’s a complex web [...]
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Also tagged advertising, biz markie, dj premier, eurythmics, kool & the gang, memes, michael jackson, nas, nineties, recursion, roxanne shante, sample maps, sampling, steve miller, turntablism
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There’s a commercial on TV right now featuring a bunch of CGI hamsters that reacquainted me with this Black Sheep classic. I knew the song better as the one that goes, “You can get with this or you can get with that.” Thank god for Google, otherwise I wouldn’t know anything about anything. This is [...]
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Also tagged advertising, black sheep, funk, iron butterfly, jazz, mccoy tyner, nineties, rnb, rock, sampling, soul, tv
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I’m pretty sure that “Need You Tonight” by INXS was the last song I fell in love with through commercial radio. I would never have admitted it, and I couldn’t have articulated why, but oh yes, in middle school this track hit me exactly where I lived. It still sounds as fresh today as it [...]
Hip-hop at its best is about truth-telling. It doesn’t get any realer than “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by Pete Rock and CL Smooth.
This song represents a lot of firsts for Michael Jackson. It was the first single from Off The Wall, and the first recording MJ made that he had complete creative control over. Many of his hits were written by Quincy Jones or Rod Temperton or the guys from Toto, but Michael wrote this one himself. [...]
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Also tagged beyonce, dance, disco, drumming, harmony, jay-z, mase, math, michael jackson, mixolydian, music theory, pop, public enemy, sampling, seventies, slick rick, tritones
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While I was researching the Spoonie G meme, I noticed that Brand Nubian uses a lot of remarkably creative samples. It inspired me to do a sample map of their first album, One For All. Click to see it bigger. Hear all the tracks sampled on One For All, via Kevin Nottingham’s awesome blog.
I’ve been hearing this line in a lot of hip-hop songs: “One for the treble, two for the time” or “One for the treble, two for the bass” or some variation. I wanted to find out what everybody’s quoting. After some internet detective work, here’s what I’ve got. The phrase is a play on the [...]
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Also tagged aceyalone, brand nubian, common, davy dmx, dj khaled, eighties, elvis presley, grandmaster flash, kurtis blow, memes, mos def, sergio mendes, seventies, snoop dogg, spoonie g
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I wrote a general post about what makes a hot beat hot. As a followup, here’s how to program some generic patterns and a few famous breakbeats. The basic unit of dance music is a sequence of sixteen eighth notes, two measures of four-four time. Drum machines like the Roland TR-808 represent the sixteen eighth [...]
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Also tagged dance, drum machines, drumming, funky drummer, hone, honey drippers, james brown, led zeppelin, looping, programming, rhythm, rock, time
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One of the funkiest albums ever recorded is The Clones Of Dr Funkenstein by Parliament. Even if you never listen to it, you’ll get funkier just by looking at the cover. There’s much to love about this album beyond its joyously ridiculous science fiction theme. There are the deft, bebop-flavored horn charts by James Brown’s [...]
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Also tagged bernie worrell, book, eighties, funk, keybs, moog, nice and smooth, parliament, royksopp, sampling, seventies, synths, talking heads
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