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
I've been watching a lot 80's movies recently, and I'm not sure, but being a teenager in the 80's may have been the best time in the history of pop culture to be a teenager, though an old slicked back greaser might disagree. Wild Style, Beat Street, and Krush Groove are required viewing at Trading On Styles headquarters. They are the holy trinity of early New York hip hop culture-- well, Style Wars too but that's just about graffiti in particular.
Wild Style, the first hip hop feature, stars Lady Pink and Lee Quinos, two notable early NYC graffiti artists, as the leads and follows them around New York's early rap scene. The film also stars Fab Five Freddy, who composed the soundtrack with members of Blondie, and Patti Astor, the heiress and financial backer of Wild Style. The film introduced hip hop to the world, showed what a shit hole the South Bronx was, and created many quotes and samples that rappers are still using today ("A to the mother fucking K...").
The craziest thing in the movie may be the jam at the end-- they shot that in a lower east side amphitheater with thousands of kids, boosted power, and no permits from the city. The city didn't even know, and they shot that twice in a six month period-- try doing that in post-Giuliani New York.
Beat Street is the best-acted and produced of the three; Harry Belafonte gets credit for that. It stars Guy Davies, the son of Ossie Davies and Ruby Dee, as a DJ trying to make it, and Rae Dawn Chong, Tommy Chong's daughter, as his love interest. It's a similar story line to Wild Style: gritty South Bronx kids doing their thing get up in the world despite all odds and throw a big party at the end. This one features more break dancing than Wild Style and a couple of trips into the subway to bomb trains. It also has appearances from Afrika Bambatta and Kool Herc, to name just two.
Krush Groove is the semi-autobiographical story of Def Jam. It stars Run DMC and Rick Rubin as themselves and the horrible Blair Underwood as Russell Simmons. It also has the Fat Boys and Shelia E, who kinda only serve as comic relief and a reminder that Shelia E was a freak.
It's weird to watch Rick, he comes off as a goofy guy. Meeting him in 1985 I wouldn't have had a clue to his genius. This picture is more about how awesome Run DMC is... oh yeah, and that friendship is important for musical success. On the down side it has gratuitous use of Kurtis Blow, why does he wear a leather tuxedo?
In these three clips, check out how much the style and delivery changed over the course of only three years:
Wild Style (1983) - Cold Crush Bros Vs Fantastic Five:
Beat Street (1984) - The Treacherous Three:
Krush Groove (1985) - LL Cool J:
June 21, 2008
Trading On Styles #3
May 2, 2008
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]
April 4, 2008
Trading On Styles #1
New column on the 'cake! Every so often, crustcake hiphop dilettante Scott Roc will stop by to offer his anecdotes on old jams, fresh beats, and dope rhymes in a feature we're calling "Trading On Styles."
by Scott Roc
Recently, we had one of those days here in New York City where spring, and by extension summer, felt like a real possibility. Something about the air quality, and the shining sun lead my thoughts to summer jams, and driving around listening to "It Was A Good Day" from The Predator by Ice Cube.
A couple of years ago I owned a beast of a car-- a 1963 Oldsmobile 98, the kind of car where you'd roll up to party with six friends and leave with ten. A classic that had been owned by members of several seminal Portland bands before I, and my very un-seminal band, got a hold of it.
The relationship between cars and rap has been theorized to explain the difference between east and west coast rap. On the east coast, the theory goes, no one in the city has a car, and there rap tapes were produced to be heard on headphones. Where the west coast has a car culture, rap was produced to be heard through car stereo systems. So the theory goes.
"It Was A Good Day," the single, turned 15 this month, and it's the perfect example of a song that plays well both in headphones and in a car. But it is in the car (and maybe I was influenced by the video which features Cube driving an Impala around LA) that the song shines.
Built around the laid back groove of The Isley Brothers' "Foosteps in the Dark," the track follows a day of playing basketball, shooting dice, seeing friends, fucking an old crush, smoking weed, and eating fast food at two in the morning that is seemingly at odds with the rest of Ice Cube's life only because there is a lack of violence or hassle from the police.
Post-riot LA must have been a fucked up place, and the rest of The Predator devotes a lot of time to examining that with tracks like "We Had to Tear This Muthafucka Up," and "When Will They Shoot?." Those tacks feel paranoid, angry. "It was A Good Day" is a buoyant track-- one that transcends all the darkness Cube explores on the rest of the album.
"I picked up the cash flow / then we played bones / and I'm yelling domino / plus nobody I now got killed in south central LA / Damn it was a good day." Later he raps "picked up a girl I'd been trying to fuck since the 12th grade / it's ironic I had the booze she had the chronic / the Lakers beat the Supersonics"; for a New Yorker that's like the Yankees beating the Red Sox. That may be my favorite line of the whole song, it sums up all the good things that can happen on a summer night that you want to stretch for ever.
The last verse is "drunk as hell / but no throwing up / half way home / and my pagers still blowing up / didn't even have to use my AK / I gotta say it was a good day." His lyrics are playful and kind of funny while still referencing the reality of South Central LA. It's a dark world, but you still gotta find the light and enjoy it while you have it.
For me there is no way to hear "It Was a Good Day" and not feel invincible and ready for anything fun that comes my way, problems can wait till tomorrow. My friend Dave and I would drive around Portland in my Olds' during the summer, checking out girls and looking for parties with "It Was a Good Day" on repeat, and it never got old. It always sounded better than anything else played through my car stereo.
Ice Cube - "It Was a Good Day":
