I don't get many chances to throw up brand new jazz funk on WKMR too often, so when this gem came across my desk I really had no choice, did I? Apparently I'm pretty out of the loop, though, since I'm just now hearing of this band and, according to their Soundcloud bio, this is the second single released off of their fourth album. Whoops.
While every other blog is going to be polishing their knob over that middling 3D / DFA / Scarlett Johannsen cover of "Summertime", I've got my sights set on this Neneh Cherry comeback bid. That's because Suicide are one of my favorite acts of all time - and overall possibly the most underrated ever - and "Dream Baby Dream" is one of their greatest tunes, a saccharine antidote to the motorik scumfuck anthems that are "Ghost Rider" and "Frankie Teardrop". No Belgians ever started a riot over "Dream Baby Dream", but this (initially chill) free jazz rendition might just do the trick for those Trappist beer drinking bastards.
Anchored by a bass heavy sample of Lou Donaldson's classic "Pot Belly", this early b-side from A Tribe Called Quest is as illustrative of the group's influential dabbling in jazz as anything that made the debut, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. The sample would go on the following year to be utilized prominently in tracks by Compton's Most Wanted ("Driveby Miss Daisy") and Ice Cube ("Horny Lil Devil") and even later a wealth of other hip hop cuts (including Dr. Dre's "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat" off his immortal The Chronic LP).
A late addition to the Native Tongues Posse - whose De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers already had records in the stores by 1990 - ATCQ were arguably the first hip hop group to invest heavily in jazz as a source of breakbeats. In comparison, Gang Starr beat Tribe to putting out an album in 1989, but that first record, No More Mr. Nice Guy, is largely built on traditional funk/r&b beats and is not particularly representative of their later, more popular core sound. ATCQ was pretty much knocking shit out of the park from day one.
"If the Papes Come" - again, a b-side off of the "Can I Kick It?" single and not originally an album cut - is most commonly found these days off 1999's The Anthology; but that first album, which sported "Bonita Applebaum" and "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" in addition to "Can I Kick It?", is a bona fide classic in its own right, and well worth hearing from start to finish.
