old school drumsticks

it was fall of ‘82. on the air, yaz was pleading “don’t go” as kevin rowland and fellow midnight runners were asking eileen to “come on”. i also just got “the message” and had started digging into ny's simmering hip-hop scene.

my exposure to new york up to that point was limited to what i’ve seen and heard in the media and fuzzy recollection of a family trip when i was a kid. i’m sure my tendency to romanticize only furthered a wholly unrealistic picture of the city. so as i explored the south bronx and the culture that gave birth to hip-hop, it was like trying an exotic dish for the first time: it could be good or bad, but it wouldn't be what i had expected.

i was surprised the signature tag, “it’s like a jungle sometimes…”, wasn’t penned by my main man at the time, melle mel, but by ed fletcher (aka duke bootee), a new jersey school teacher. it’s the musical equivalent of a jim belushi or nicky hilton: related, yes, but not as advertised. yet, it was cool that someone as unlikely as he could, with the help of keith leblanc, doug wimbish, and skip mcdonald (aka the sugarhill house band), redefined hip-hop’s possibility in one fell swoop.

powered by leblanc’s man-machine beats, fletcher et. al. reduced funk to its raw essentials. the added bounce to the ounce also balanced the song’s whiff of melodrama with undeniable grit and cred.

like rick rubin, fletcher brought an outsider’s perspective to the game (flash's initial resistance to the track is well-doucmented). but while rubin graduated from his nyu dorm room to a series of provocative explorations of musical americana - from slayer to johnny cash, and most recently, neil diamond - bootee wasn’t able to parlay his earlier success into a sustained career or even a coherent body of work. much of fletcher’s later releases don’t do much for me; with the exception of a series of singles in the mid-80s on his own beauty and the beat imprint, they only further muddied his reputation and nudged him closer to irrelevance.

what those b&b records share with “the message” is a dense, propulsive groove brimming with a cagey intensity. it's a sound that leblanc and adrian sherwood would later perfect with the fats comet releases. the way that same sensibility defines these singles strongly suggests a producer capable of expressing himself only with kicks and snares hardened in the concrete jungle.

“king kut” by dj cheese and word of mouth (1985) is probably best known among hip-hop heads and can be had on compilation reissues from both sides of the pond. others, like z-3 mc’s “triple threat” (1986), point blank mc’s “what the party needs” (1987), mc crash’s “life on the street” (1987), and bootee’s own “broadway” (1987) are less well known, although j. saul kane (aka depth charge) did include “triple threat” on his 1997 “beat classics” compilation for dc recordings.

Posted by cellpharmer at July 15, 2005 08:28 AM