04 July 2011

The Commission

One of my new coworkers has commissioned me for a introduction to rap music sampler.  I pride myself on my ability to put together excellent mixes, but I've had my head so far out of hip hop over the past 5 to 10 years that this has proven to be somewhat of an awakening for me.
She actively asked me for the mix with no provocation or previous conversation on the matter.  I applauded her curiosity and gladly obliged. To add a bit of perspective, this request had come from an adorable petite little porcelain princess who lives in middle american Ohio where, I can only imagine, Confederate flags are a common occurrence on many a neighborhood front porch.   Thusly I consider this an honor and an opportunity to broaden the horizons of someone who is genuinely curious.  I highly doubt that what I had to her will be what she wants or expects.  That's understood and dually noted.  My prejudice places her hip hop knowledge to be limited to that of late 90's Ja Rule and and aught Jay Z.  She also mentioned something about Rhianna which she quickly and sort of apologetically conceded with, 'Oh well, I guess that's not really rap'.
No, my dear. It's not.

I take this duty very seriously and have been working hard on it on my 4 day holiday weekend.  I'm doing a listen-through right now of what I think may be the final cut. I won't post the track listing as, honestly, I don't want to date myself nor am I confident in my choices.  I tried to choose some of those most  accessible and potent songs in my library.  It just so turns out that 6 of the 14 ended up with J Dilla production.  Kanye, Outkast, and The Roots have also made the cut.  Admittedly It's very niche.

While on memory lame I stumbled upon one of the dopest and ballsiest instrumentals, in my opinion, in rap history.  Every now and again Diddy (back then Puff Daddy) would come out with something that reminds you of just how he got on top.  Too bad this track was squandered by one of his many lackluster MCs and his own incessant yelling over top the song.  Here's G-Dep's  'Special Delivery':





It has no bass line!
To be fair, though, Outkast did do that first (and also with no proper drum track) with one of my dearest songs off of their ATLiens album, E.T. (Extraterrestrial):


2 comments:

Afrochic said...

I LOVE it when someone asks for an introduction to Hip Hop. "My child, you have come to the right place. Please, allow me to guide you through the Splendorness." Ha ha :)

David said...

I can't recall this ever happening before. I know I've made hip hop mixes before but that was just by default because it was primarily what I was listening to at the time. It's funny how life goes through epochs like that. So far the mix has gotten good feedback.