the beat church

it's like me to be behind the times, but this time i'm a full decade behind! blogging has been going for 10 years this year and i'm only just getting on to it now... never mind, i always like to be fashionably late, so why should this be any different? any way it got me thinking what i was up to 10 years ago and what music was doing it for me back then. the year was 1999 and i was living in liverpool and the nearest i got to having internet access was having an answerphone at the crib... 'answerphone beat'

...so it was the turn of the century and the end of the last millenium, whilst a fat dancer from stoke was cashing in, busta rhymes was telling anyone who'd listen that there was only one year left and a certain argentine goalkeeper was running for the hills preparing for the coming apocalypse.... meanwhile, i was still buying up treats in the form of round black discs and partying hard, just in case the end was indeed, nigh. in the hip hop world rawkus were still doing their thing, j-dilla was still jay dee and his future collaborator madlib was dropping his first single under his quasimoto guise...

looking through my collection (using the handiest of functions on discogs) from that year, hip hop vinyl was still going strong, as evidenced with the lavish gatefold sleeve (with dope artwork by mear) and quadruple vinyl offering from fat jack, 'cater to the dj'. this was a favourite of mine with some choice cuts making on to my home made mix tapes from that period, i was reppin' the west coast hard, there was an abundance of underground talent that i don't think enough people got to hear

'we like breakbeats' fat jack ft. the a-team

'i wonder' fat jack ft. st. mark 9.23

i really appreciated a lot of the diversity that fat jack and his contemporaries were putting into their beat craft, it wasn't the same old boom bap sound, they were experimenting and it sounded fresh. the highlife movement record was a great example of this, done on an SP-12 down to 4 track, it has that raw factor without getting raw, intricately weaved samples with sounds you wouldn't expect to hear on your average hip hop record of the era...

'history/the difference between you & me' the highlife movement ft. abstract rude

as well as good life/project blowed mc's and producers doing the do, there was still loads more west coast artists trying to catch some shine in the sunshine, with crews like the shapeshifters coming in from the left field, crews like KNT representing the b-boy element and A.M.E. (Athletic Mic Experts) creating some dope sonic landscapes and laidback rhymes to show where they were coming from (the under of course)

'this y'all' k.n.t.

'a.m.e.' a.m.e.

away from the left coast, there was still plenty of goings on in the hip hop stratosphere and enough good releases to tempt me away from my hard earned. with a diverse range of artists dropping releases on my favourite medium (wax, dummy), with acts like binary star (outta michigan), buck 65 (nova scotia, canada), clokworx (reppin' massachusetts), count bass-d (all-american) and dj sat-one (holding it down for p.a.) putting out 12's that have stood up to regular rotation for the last 10 years.

'violatin' (mighty v.i.c. remix)' count bass-d

'any champion' dj sat-one ft. pace-won & dj revolution

and if all that dope music wasn't enough, one of the greatest ever books written about hip hop, also dropped that same year, fug it i'm jumping in the delorean cos tonight i'm gonna party like it's 1999.

great just what the world needs, another blog!

seeing as though i spend so much of my time reading other peoples blogs, i thought i'd climb aboard and give it a go.

i don't claim that i'll be breaking any new ground, i will simply be posting things that i find interesting/entertaining (with a musical slant) and hope that others will too...

so where do you go for your first post???

down the tried and tested route of course, 'break to the beat' innit.

so on to the music, let's do this chronologically shall we.

first up is king floyd, i recently found this lp for a bargain price and was pleasantly surprised, one, cos it turns out that it was a nice slice of soulful music and two because it contained a couple of tunes that i recognised on it. now i didn't know this particular tune, but i did recognise the introduction offa summat, but i couldn't remember for the life of me what it was!

'do your feeling'

then i remembered... it was something that the man like marlon williams (a.k.a marley marl) had a hand in and i swiftly located it in the racks. it was none other than the microphone prince and his 1994 smash hit (yeah right) 'trunk of funk'. now the lp version is interesting in itself as it was produced by an old school hip hop legend; master o.c. from the fearless four no less, but it was the marley marl vocal mix that i wanted and sure enough there it was, the intro from k.f.'s 'do your feeling' and my day was made, hope you enjoy the tunes as much as i do.