Notes from a suburban raver - DannyL's list

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DannyL

Wild Horses
Can't think of another way to do this beyond the chronological, so we'll stick to i until I get bored.
It's weird, I'd shown some sympathy towards the Devil's music (heavy metal) at about 10 or so, but never went further than watching it on Saturday morning TV. Luckily rap came along exactly coincident with puberty, and saved me.
The first things I ever heard in that way that you want to take them on as yours, become then, were a couple of electro tracks taped off JVC by my mate Sukh.
First track up was the best, this:

There's something about that that seems absolutely perfect calibrated to appeal towards suburban teeenage boys. It sounded (then) like the future, the coolness ofthe American streets, and computers! Around that time I got a ZX Spectrum that you had to upload games onto via a tape recorder, the two events are smudged together in my mind.

The other two tracks on that tape were also fire.it included this and I'm just searching for tune number 3, which in the vagaries of memory, turns out not to be called what I thought.
 
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version

Well-known member
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DannyL

Wild Horses
A few more early electro bits that I love. Most of these were heard in the early days listening to infamous rap nonce Tim Westwood's show, which was on LWR 4-6, aimed at the afterschool set. I don't know if people appreciate now to what degree early rap was kid's music. The big stars were still in their teens, and the music was pretty adolescent in tone.

3.
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luka

luka

Well-known member
maybe the mid nineties was an anomlay in terms of adult oriented rap. although even then the most grown up sounding albums were largely made by teenagers
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
No one really talks about DJ Cheese anymore. He was fucking everywhere in 1986, a megastar. The highpoint of UK Fresh, the first huge rap concert in London. I missed out on this somehow, though I did go and see Run DMC this year at Hammersmith Odeon, probably first gig I ever went to. I still think this sounds fucking amazing. Luka, had you heard this before?

5.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
luka said:
maybe the mid nineties was an anomlay in terms of adult oriented rap. although even then the most grown up sounding albums were largely made by teenagers
Click to expand...
I was thinking of something like Veronica by The Bad Boys, which I don't want to include in my top 100 'cos it's not very good, but it's so 12 years old in the way it talks about girls.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
its probably more oedipal now but in the nineties to be a 'true head' you were expected to know your history weren't you. and there would be regular old skool sections on radio shows and so on. so you heard all those eighties records even though you grew up a decade later.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
6. Fat Boys - Stick'em
I'm including this because it's a throwback to that moment of totally bizarttitude. These guys, Whodini and Run DMC were the biggest rap stars out. How did a USP of making funny mouth noises and being overweight lead to such success?

This is also a shout out to something I remember from the time, the way every group of black guys I'd see would have one guy walking along at the back, beatboxing.

Bonus entry, All You Can Eat from Krush Groove:
This is just an incredible piece of cinema.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
7. Aleem - Confusion
Hip hop obviously crossed over with and was played alongside lots of the soul and r&b at the time, and though initially I remembered not liking records with singing on (hey I was 11), I came around eventually. This is one that seems quinessential to that moment, Aleem - Confusion. Aleem was Leroy Burgess who was an absolutely incredible disco songwriter who'd kept up with the production styles of the moment. His tracks "Release Yourself" and "Get Loose" were both b-boy classics but this is his lesser known (I think) slow jam.


Just realised I had the wrong link above, now changed.

 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Just thinking - planning some out later tracks and I feel very lucky to have grown up firstly with this stuff then the emergent rave and house scenes that came together a few years later. Amazing really. Pus all the funk, soul, jazz, that was in the air at that time.
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Hiphop started to first get dark to around 1986 with BDP "South Bronx", and rappers like Just Ice. There seemed to be a realness and aggression there that'd been absent before. In retrospect, I wonder if this was the impact of crack echoing through the music world? Childhood is over. This is a bit of a halfway house between the two, that kinda proves that point in choice of subject matter. A bit of faux social realism reportage which I normally hate but it combined with the NY sound of that time, it sounds great.

This caused a lot of controversy when It came out, due to the kind of, I guess, celebratory nihilism? The version on the album has "ya better not!" dubbed over the chorus.

8. Funkmaster Wizard Wiz - Crack It Up

 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
Before I move away from the electro/early rap selection, another one I'm curious if people have hear? One of the first cut up records, infamous for taking the early breakbeats as used the likes of Herc and Jazzy Jay, and basically cashing in on their earlier experimentation. Still a barnstormer of a tune, though. I remember hearing Westwood play this bitd, I guess as homage to the music's history.

9. Lesson 3, Double Dee & Steinski - Lesson 3

 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
!0. Troubefunk - So Early in the Morning

One of the many great things about rap is the way in which it just opens you up to other musics. A little remembered byway these days is go-go, a super-percussive dance band music outta Washington. I actually went to see TroubleFunk, the biggest and best band in the genre, in 1986, second or third gig I ever went to.This was kind of the hippest ticket on the planet that week. I feel like I burned up all my early years hipster points there. I had a Troublefunk baseball gap at one point, green, which I wore with a Beasties style accessorised MA1. I must have looked so obnoxious, I want to go back in time to beat myself up. Anyway, enough about satorial missteps on with the tunes.

How can anyone front on shit like this, this is just undeniable.

 
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