-Marvin Gaye
As I said in my earlier blog, I thought I would enlighten you all as to how I got into old school soul music. Well, my story is a bit different than most. I was born in New Orleans, LA in 1982 to a soul father and a pop mother. My dad was a big fan of James Brown and had every album he put out and would frequently zone out and jam to them. My mom was more into the female singers and groups with that more uptempo feel, like Patti LaBelle and Evelyn "Champagne" King. As a kid, I would just watch them and enjoy the rhythm.
I spent the time between '85-'87 in L.A. with my mom. Being away from my dad, I didn't hear as much "old music" as I used to, seeing as my dad was the music man of the house. However, when I went back to N.O. in '87, I came to appreciate the music I was hearing and I learned of a new type of music called rap. Ironically, the first rap LP I heard was LL Cool J's "Goin' Back to Cali," which I couldn't get enough of. I made a tape of it and played it every chance I got. As I grew older, I listened to the radio more and more and made more mixtapes of this rap music.
It wasn't until I was in about 3rd or 4th grade that I realized that sampling existed. On my way to school, I heard a song called "Can't Touch This," and said to myself "Rick James raps?" I was quickly informed that it was MC Hammer and not Rick James. I found it odd and remained confused about certain songs because when the opening break would come on, I wouldn't really be sure as to what song I was about to hear.
As I grew up, I became more and more addicted to rap music, and more importantly, the beats. Being from N.O. and the more bouncy party rap scene, a lot of the rap I was hearing was from guys like Juvenile, Pimp Daddy, Ruthless Juveniles, etc. While most hip-hop fans were growing up to movies like Breakin' and Krush Groove and learning the lyrics of the budding classic MC's at the time, I was busy bumpin' dance music and learning how to do the dances that were dictated in this bounce music I was hearing, the whole while, becoming more and more interested in the beats and what they were made of.
Fast forward to 1996. I'm in high school, and big into German culture. I find out that my school has a German foreign exchange program and we could host a student when they came in town. I selected a guy named Patrick to stay at my house. From the moment I met him, I was going crazy. All of a sudden, this whole different world opened up to me and I was introduced to all the REAL hip-hop I had been missing out on because I was worrying about booty music. I was introduced to the in-depth works of a lot of the hot NY artists, but none more than Wu-Tang. Patrick let me dub a copy of his Ironman CD and it was all over for me. When he left 3 weeks later, I ran to all my friends and asked them to dub me copies of their Wu-Tang albums. This was around the time that the Internet became popular and AOL was just starting to boom. From there, I found a website called TheDSC, which had, among other things, a "breaks" section. In this section, they had cut loops of the beats of Wu-Tang songs and required use of a program called Cool Edit to listen to it.
I become addicted to this as well and would breeze through every album I had and make loops of those beats. One day, I was at my cousin's house and he said "I have the song from that loop that you always play," and played Jackson 5's Maybe Tomorrow, which of course, was used on "All That I Got is You." I loved this break especially because of the slow crooning that Michael did towards the end of the break. I did more research and learned the art of sampling. This was around the time that Puff Daddy and Bad Boy became HEAVILY mainstream and unavoidable. It was at that point that I realized that sampling was something that was being done ABUNDANTLY and not just something a couple people did once or twice. From this point, I would go back through all the rap CD's and tapes I had, looking for the samples and going through my mom and dad's music collection looking for those originals.
I would do a sample search every now and again, but didn't get very deep into it. Then, in 2000, a guy at another message board put out a compilation of samples and called it "These Are the Breaks." Before then, I never even knew that people put out sample comp's or that there was even a demand for them. So I decided to do one. While in the planning stages, I happened to be watching a copy of Original Kings of Comedy and thought "wouldn't it be cool to have clips of this movie introduce the samples." and thus the idea of hosting was born and I put out my own compilation called "Jackin' for Beats."
I thought it was something cool and fun to do and that it would be something people would like for about 2 days and die off. When I saw the positive responses, I decided to do another one, again not expecting it to take off. The increasing demand pushed me to up my grind and move beyond the confines of my existing music collection and reach out to others. It was here that I discovered the art of digging. I would go to stores, flea markets, and family and friend's houses looking for records (mainly soul) and found out that a lot of these hip-hop songs weren't just sampling good breaks, they were sampling good SONGS, and I was taken back to my roots of getting into soul records, sample or not.
By now, I'm in college away from home in a small city called Lafayette. It is around this time that I hear of an up and coming producer named Kanye West, whose specialty was old soul vocal samples. This struck a chord with me because of my love of the emotion that those vocal samples invoke, and I began narrowing my search to vocal samples. However, I realized that I was in this small town with no set record areas to peruse. Then that "Maybe Tomorrow" cousin said "you know there's an indoor flea market selling albums for $1 apiece?" That's all I needed to hear. From then on, I became a mainstay in that place, usually for 3-4 hour clips, emerging with a cramped neck, ashy hands, and an armful of amazing finds. In the meantime, I hooked up with some very close digging friends of mine and created a group called The Originators.
So, 9 volumes and a hell of a lot richer (musically), I sit here amongst you fine folks, rubbing shoulders with some of the best in the soul-loving game now. Some curse the message or the lack of creativity in today's work, but I must give it the props in deserves in my case, because it has turned me onto so much new music. Now, in the words of Frankie Beverly and Maze, We Are One, and there's a "no divorce" clause in our prenup.
-B
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