More roots of hip-hop on the radio

StevieG

Talkin all that Jazz with Blue Note records!

Okay last week i discussed Electro and its importance in the evolution of hip-hop but by the mid 80's hip-hop was still being dismissed as a fad and a novelty. As the decade progressed James Brown and the funk greats were providing many of the samples to countless rap anthems and this helped resurrect the career of the Godfather of Soul and Funk.

But in a way, hip-hop coulda been heading for a rut as suddenly every second record sampled the "Funky Drummer" and suddenly a lot of hip-hop was sounding the same. Sure, this was the era of classic material by EPMD, Public Enemy, NWA, Eric B and Rakim etc (some of the best hip-hop ever) but it wasn't until some of the most creative producers in hip-hop started digging up old jazz that the new skool and real golden-age developed.

Suddenly the Prince Pauls, Pete Rocks, Large Professors, Diamond Ds, Tribe Called Quests, DJ Premiers of the world came on the scene and started delving deeper into black music by sampling original jazz records by labels like Blue Note. The music of Donald byrd, Bobby Humhpries, Horace Silver, Gary Bartz et al added a new sophistication to hip-hop and the process of sampling and looping became far more complicated and intricate in the early 90s.

Its no co-incidence that i've dubbed my two previous mixes dealing with this era as the True Skool as this was one of the most important times in black music history, as a new breed of talented young producers and rappers embraced and re-awoke interest in a jazz heritage that was seriously out of fashion and unrecognised at this stage. Similar interest was created by the Acid jazz and rare-groove scenes in the UK and beyond and suddenly the likes of Donald Byrd and Roy Ayers were hot again, not to mind James Brown!

As a student of hip-hop i've been lucky enough to be aware of Blue Note for many many years and have been collecting re-issiues, compilations and originals for a long time now. Remember, this is a record label that is still active and still brings cutting edge hip-hop, jazz, house and of course jazz by the likes of St Germain, Madlib, Eric Truffaz and Ronny Jordan right up to the present day. On Saturday night on Black on Red I'll be trawling through my favourite Blue Note records for my music special between 8.45 and 10PM on RedFM 104-106

Listen on-line at www.redfm.ie

Makaveli

Nice.
I have the Madlib album Shades of Blue where he was given full access to the entire Blue Note vaults. It's a quality album.

StevieG

Yeah man thats some serious album i'll be playing a lot of the originals including the classic "Steppin Into Tomorrow" by Donald Byrd. Madlibs mix of that is unreal!!!!!!

ubu

Sweet, probably an understatement but you clearly know your shít when it comes to Hip-Hop, pity i keep missing your shows, Saturday nights aren't a good time!, keep it up anyway, im sure your educating alot of people with your shows.

echomadman

tbh, i listen to more jazz than hip-hop these days, the Madlib Shades of blue is a great album.
I veered into jazz through the "blue break beats" series of albums,I was always a hip-hop/reggae fan, but the only exposure i'd had to jazz was cliched crap. It filled a deep trainspottery void in my life picking out where all the samples in my favourite tracks came from and i went from there.
Sounds like a good show, saturday night's a bitch though. Nice to know someone's playing proper hip-hop and educating people on the quality side of it and its origins, rather than blasting out the latest blingtastic "MVP of rap", whose record sales are proportional to the amount of times he's been in prison/shot.

StevieG

Thanks guys
And it went like this!

Cannonball Adderley-Walk Tall
Blue Mitchell-Good Humour Man
Grant Green-Sookie Sookie
Horace Silver-Song for my Father
Herbie Hancock-Cantaloupe Island
Bobby Humphrey-You Make me Feel so Good
A Taste of Honey-I Love You
Monk Higgins-Little Green Apples
Lou Donaldson-Pot Belly
Donald Byrd-Steppin Into Tomorrow
Bobby Humphrey-Please Set Me at Ease
Gene Harris-Los Alamitos-LatinFunkLoveSong
Waters-Sitting Here All Alone
Bobby Hutcherson-Goin Down South
Ike Quebec-Shu Shu
John Coltrane-LazyBird
Donald Byrd-You and the Music
Donald Byrd-Dominoes
Donald Byrd-Think Twice

This week its funk i'll post more details in the next day or two!