Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Moonwalking On Mountains


That breakbeat, those now famous ad-libs, I don't even think the band Mountain themselves would have guess that their 1969 live rendition of "Long Red" at Woodstock would become a staple in a totally different genre of music. It's up there with James Brown's "Funky Drummer," Skull Snaps' "It's A New Day," and Melvin Bliss' "Synthetic Substitution," as the most used break in Hip-Hop. Everybody... and I mean EVERYBODY has used it at some point. Pete Rock, DJ Premier J. Dilla, Kanye West, Madlib, 9th Wonder, Large Professor... list goes on and on.

Of course what can be said already that hasn't been said about Track 7 on Thriller. Human Nature is hands down one of my favorite records from the King of Pop. I don't know what is about those opening synths, but it gives me this feeling of flying, absolute elevation, like Jordan from the free throw line or NASA from the launch pad. Then, of course during the mid 90s, the song was re-introduced to another generation thanks to SWV ("Right Here") and Nasty Nas ("It Ain't Hard To Tell"). When these two are put together (See "It Ain't Hard To Tell" as mentioned above) it's a perfect marriage like Peanut Butter & Jelly, Burgers & French Fries, Chicken & Waffles... well you get the point. And once again, as I was getting use to use Maschine, I decided to re-flip these two classics.

Then, in the middle of a session about a month ago, I played the beat for the rest of the fellas, 3 hours later, you have what you are hearing now.

Since we didn't want to use it for a full song ("The Sample Police" would jack us for everything short of the clothes off our backs if we release this commercially, lol!), I still didn't want it to remain forever on my hard drive only for my ears to hear. So with the re-release of MJ's Bad today (its 25th anniversary), I thought why not? Captain Eo... we're ready for launch.

- DJ Chuck "thE oLd SouL"

DJ Chuck "thE oLd SouL"- Programming/Keyboards/Percussion
Kerwin Tsang- Bass
Brian "Trumpet Bling" Williams- Trumpet
James "J.D." Daniels- Drums

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