Trading On Styles #2

Every so often, crustcake hiphop dilettante Scott Roc stops by to offer his anecdotes on old jams, fresh beats, and dope rhymes in a feature we call "Trading On Styles."

by Scott Roc

Hip hop music has many penniless heroes (every genre does I suppose [Alan Freed comes immediately to mind in the rock world. -Ed.]); people who helped shape the sound, the style, and culture of rap. Rap's relationship to its roots is different than other music forms, in that in many cases those heroes created the sound many years before rappers were working.

Tyrone Thomas was a young drummer from the south who hooked up with Patti Labelle's band the Bluebells as a teenager. After the Bluebells broke up, Thomas started a new group that represented his vision of an integrated group, the Whole Darn Family. In 1974 (or depending on the source 1976) they released Has Arrived, an album that would have gone largely unrecognized if not for DJs a generation later.

The opening to the track "Seven Minutes of Funk" has been used most famously by EPMD, and Jay-Z. EPMD's (Erick and Parrish Makin' Dollars) 1988 track "It's My Thing" was the first time I heard the bass line from "Seven Minutes of Funk"; I was probably about ten and that shit stoked me out, still does.

Download: Tyrone Thomas and the Whole Darn Family - "Seven Minutes of Funk" [MP3]
Download: Tyrone Thomas and the Whole Darn Family - "It's My Thing" [MP3]