This article was originally published on 19 October 2011.AMG review: What ties these 12 soul/funk gems from the '70s together, apart from stylistic and periodic similarities? First and foremost, the feel of each song is reflected in the disc's title, which obviously takes its name from the first selection here, Lowrell's "Mellow Mellow Right On." Second, this disc comes with a sticker affixed to it that proclaims, "Original sources for Massive Attack, A Tribe Called Quest, Eric B. If it leans more towards beats production than the era’s increasingly popular gangsta genre, perhaps that is because hip-hop’s militancy reinvents itself every few years - with a canny eye on the genre’s commercial opportunities - whereas the time’s layered production innovations remain relevant in a work of digital audio tools such as Pro Tools, Cubase, and Reason.Īndroid Face by bluebudgie ( Pixabay License / Pixabay What follows is, necessarily, a highly partial selection of the year’s highlights. Smooth’s All Souled Out EP, and follow-ups by Geto Boys, Ice Cube, and much more. Hood, UMC’s Fruits of Nature, Pete Rock & C. At the same time the gangsta genre narrowed hip-hop’s militant political street ethic - epitomized previously by politically conscious stances of Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy, among others - but the resulting controversy took the genre to a wider market.Īmong the year’s releases were debuts from Organized Konfusion and Freestyle Fellowship Public Enemy’s Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black KMD’s Mr. Building on the innovations of Marley Marl, Ced Gee, and others, the producers of the early ’90s - among them Pete Rock, Diamond D, Large Professor, and DJ Premier - built complex sample-based productions and drew from a palette that included increasingly obscure soul jazz, jazz-funk, and R&B cuts - and did so in an atmosphere of ferocious innovation and competition. The year 1991 was one of astonishing riches in hip-hop, landing (depending somewhat on your definition) somewhere in the middle of the genre’s “golden age”. “Brothers are amused by others brother’s reps / But the thing they know best is where the gun is kept”. In “Just to Get a Rep”, Premier bounces around a loop from Jean-Jacques Perry’s kitsch organ LP Moog Indigo, while Guru is chillingly casual as he describes a stick-up kid’s pursuit of a victim. Guru was full-on and braggy in “Step in the Arena”, Premier stripped-back and dusty. At their best, the contrast between their styles was there if you were listening for it but disappeared into the pure strut of their sound. Guru’s lyrics remained clear, open, and effortlessly confident. But songs like “The Meaning of a Name” and “Beyond Comprehension”, with its reversed opening - a brilliant transformation of a fragment from Soul II Soul’s “Keep on Movin'” - show the kind of textural experimentation that kept Premier in the front ranks of producers, alongside the crowd-pleasing loops of “What You Want This Time?” and “Love Sick”. A wall of textbook DJ Premier productions - tight, perfectly focused, impulsively looped creations–Gang Starr’s second album, Step in the Arena, was modestly reviewed upon release.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |