"A New York Treasure" --Village Voice

Beat of the Day

When this tune came out there just wasn’t anything else that sounded like it. I remember listening to it on the bus as my high school baseball team drove to away games. Twenty years later, it stands as one of the great Hip Hop singles. Gotta love that 808 drum machine.

28 Going Back To Cali

Dig how Kid Koala flipped the horn intro into this classic turntablist routine:

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14 comments

1 RagingTartabull   ~  Mar 2, 2010 10:51 am
2 ms october   ~  Mar 2, 2010 11:06 am

we had to take some choral class in middle school.
needless to say i should not be allowed to sing anywhere including in choral class. for reference my mother went to a british school growing up in india and she was such a horrible singer that the teachers removed her from the chorus and made her tend to the plants in the gardens - she is now an excellent gardener but my mother passed on the same inability to carry a note to me.
so, in choral class we had to do a performance with another student as part of our grade. since i couldn't sing, my friend and i performed goin back to cali for our performance. it wasn't really in line with what everyone else did (think whitney houston, boy george, etc) but we pulled it off.

so, this is definitely one of my favorite ll tracks.

3 thelarmis   ~  Mar 2, 2010 12:54 pm

"Gotta love that 808 drum machine."

NO. i don't. in fact, i LOATHE drum machines!!! not only do they sound fake and awful, but they take away my jobs and work. a lot of it. drum machines are terrible, horrible, no good and very bad!

that said, there are some positive learning tools with it, when it acts as an enhancer and metronome. as far as the sole drumming instrument, i friggin' HATE these things!!!

4 thelarmis   ~  Mar 2, 2010 12:54 pm

btw, i kinda dug some LL Cool J back in the day (believe it, or not) - music and movies. i've been enjoying him as "Sam" in NCIS: Los Angeles, as well...

5 Chyll Will   ~  Mar 2, 2010 1:09 pm

[3] Lol, poor Thelarmis...

6 thelarmis   ~  Mar 2, 2010 1:18 pm

[5] yes - poor, as in...poor, 'coz all my work is taken over by godforsaken drum machines! kids these days. hey you, get offa my lawn!!! (raise fists and shakes them!) ; )

7 ms october   ~  Mar 2, 2010 1:23 pm

[6] hey you - stay away from our hip-hop discussions :}

8 thelarmis   ~  Mar 2, 2010 1:36 pm

[7] yes, ma'am. my bad! (runs very fast to the "jazz room" only to find it filled with 2,000 bay area thrash metal cd's!) : )

9 ms october   ~  Mar 2, 2010 1:38 pm

[8] haha - see i won't come poking my nose around your thrash metal discussions, raining on your parade :}

10 thelarmis   ~  Mar 2, 2010 1:46 pm

[9] in that case, i guess i ought not interfere w/ the white bean & fennel soup, either! it's just, i've been away - nyc - and haven't commented for awhile. figured i'd ruffle your - and RI's - feathers! ; )

btw, it's snowing again in the deep south. i guess i brought it back with me. i'm good like that...

11 ms october   ~  Mar 2, 2010 1:49 pm

[10] ah i see. how was your trip home?
i can't believe it is snowing in the south again. for the just over 20 years i lived there i think it snowed three times.

12 thelarmis   ~  Mar 2, 2010 2:00 pm

[11] trip home was wonderful! though quite adventurous - took about 10 hours to get there. i flew up thursday. we were in the air, over philthy, when LGA closed. we circled and eventually flew all the way back down to richmond, VA, for some stoopid reason. we eventually headed back toward LGA, for them to shut down the airport again! we landed at JFK, which was better, as it's closer to my parents' house. but i was supposed to arrive at LGA and take my oldest nephew to his drum lesson that evening, so it was disappointing. other than that, the delays really weren't bad, at all. kinda fun, actually!

saw - and hung out with - my favorite drummer in the City friday night and that ruled! my very first drumset teacher from when i was a little kid, met me there, which was cool.

hung with the kids - my brothers' 3 - and my folks the rest of the weekend. also spent a few hours with a bass player buddy - and his fam - that i knew from half a life ago.

now, i'm back home and have a million things to do. it was really nice to come home to my new pad for the first time! : )

i hear ya, this is my 14th winter here and it's very rarely snowed. and certainly never in march!

13 ms october   ~  Mar 2, 2010 2:42 pm

[12] that's cool - sounds like you had a good trip and coming home to a nice place you like is nice.

14 Mr. OK Jazz TOKYO   ~  Mar 2, 2010 8:55 pm

[12] Yo thelarmis, what's up?? Long time, buddy!
Let me be the peace-maker between drummers & drum-machines. Don't forget, Miles Davis was using drum machines for extra texture and "spacey" effects back in the mid-70s. The mid-70s!! No one had a clue what he was doing..25-years later all the "trip-hop" guys said "of course!" and bowed down to Miles...Sly Stone used them too on "There's a Riot Goin On!", an all-time classic...so, in the right hands they can add a lot.

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