Silk Tymes Leather, Son of Bazerk, Jungle Brothers
One of the first acts Jermaine Dupri put together was Silk Tymes Leather. They were an obvious copy of Salt 'n' Pepa, but they could definitely rap. Their album It Ain't Where You're From, It's Where You're At contains a LOT of Rakim samples and a few good songs, like today's track, "Do Your Dance (Work It Out)". This is the 12" mix, and was produced by Dupri with Joe the Butcher. I used to hear this a lot on the WRAS hip hop show "The Beatbox", with DJ JD. I wonder if Jermaine had any idea when he was sampling Janet Jackson in 1989 that he would be with her 15 years later. My turntable slips a little at about 1:13, sorry.Son of Bazerk is remembered for one song, "Change the Style". Their 1991 album Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk had a few other great songs on it, and was produced by the Bomb Squad when they were at the height of their powers. The song "Bang (Get Down, Get Down)!" had some crappy singing on the album version. This is the instrumental from the 12". It actually has some rapping and toasting on it, so it's not strictly an instrumental, but without the singing you can focus on the Bomb Squad's extraordinary production work.
The Jungle Brothers followed their uplifting Done by the Forces of Nature album with 1993's confusing J.Beez wit the Remedy. They seem to be lashing out against their record company or the music industry in general, and the music becomes truly abstract on later cuts like "Spitting Wicked Randomness" and "For the Headz at Company Z". But the leadoff track, "40 Below Trooper" is a classic. Produced by Bob Power, it samples the Billy Squier "Big Beat". Another forgotten Jungle Brothers' album is 1997's Raw Deluxe. The song "Brain" features the Roots.
Silk Tymes Leather: Do Your Dance (Work It Out)
Son of Bazerk: Bang (Get Down, Get Down)!
Jungle Brothers: 40 Below Trooper
Jungle Brothers: Brain
8 Comments:
Jon
Of all the music you ever sent my way, or recommended, I think
"40 Below Trooper" is my favorite. Its amazing to me that its still not well known. I can see more obscure band having such great songs that just roll under the couch and never are found again. I think its high time that hollywood gets that collective huge creative mind cranking and have someone like Jack Johnson do a cover of it for a movie version of Sanford and Son.
Pac Man coming and your going to get chomped
Just linked you in my site. Good stuff mang! Perhaps you could add ol' Ickmusic to your b-roll? ;-)
Pete
Chris, my man -- Good to see you're still feeling the wrath of science and math! Your playlist over at (Sm)all Ages was great.
Pete, my mang -- I added Ick Music to my blogroll yesterday. I like the variety of music you write about. Don Letts called it having "big ears", and that's what I aspire to.
Dear Mr. Manyjars,
uploadhut.com seems not to be sending these along. Erm. I get the download dialogue; it just never starts to download.
Perpetually puzzled, I am,
Don't know what to tell you, Tuwa. I just tried right-click-save-as on one of the files, and it functioned just as advertised. Maybe there is a compatibility problem between their hut and your shanty.
Hm. I guess so. It's still not working here for some reason--neither FF 1.5 nor IE 5.0. Odd.
It is amazing what you get when you google "Spitting Wicked Randomness" and, you know what? I do have that much funky shit in my brain. I can't believe that it was only 2 years between Son of Bazerk and ...Remedy, seemed like so much longer back in the day. They even sound like they are from different eras. Great blog, thanks!
And light years between Remedy and its predecessor, "Done by the Forces of Nature". What happened to the JB's? I liked their most recent record, VIP, but they are so different now...
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home