The Making of Pete Rock and C.L.Smooth’s enduring classic, “T.R.O.Y.”

[Featured Image Via: Indulgy]

Via Ego Trip, here’s a good, long interview with Q-Tip. Just when you thought Tip was an unbearable flake you watch something like this and understand what he’s about. Sure, there is some self-consciousness but he’s an artist, after all. Beyond that, he’s funny and smart and it’s a good interview. Oh, and skip ahead to the 50:30 mark to hear a snippet of Primo’s incredible demo version of Nas’ “Memory Lane.” Can’t get it out of my head, man.

Via Ego Trip, dig this oral history of the making of “The Crooklyn Dodgers” tune over at Red Bull Music Academy.

[Photo Credit: Chris Arnade]

“You know, when I’m walkin’ down Yonge Street, you won’t believe this, but you know some of them funny people have the nerve to point the finger at me and grin and smile and whisper. But you know, that don’t worry Jackie, because I know I look good. And every Monday morning I laugh and grin on my way to the bank, because I got mine. I look good, I got money and everything else that I need. You know what my slogan is? Baby, do what you want, just know what you’re doing. As long as you don’t force your will and your way on anybody else, live your life, because ain’t nobody sanctified and holy.”

Jackie Shane.

“I Bet Your Mama Was a Tent Show Queen.”

Good piece on a group of session musicians called “The Section” by David Browne in the new issue of Rolling Stone:

[Danny] Kortchmar’s terse guitar riffs, inspired by his hero Steve Cropper, nudged their way into the songs. He had his own rules: “The parts gotta be simple. You gotta help the song. Don’t step on the singer.” Kunkel became known not just for his firm, unobtrusive playing but as one of the few drummers who would read the words to a song before recording. “I’d get a feel for what the artist was trying to portray,” he says. “If it’s a love story and doesn’t require big drums, what can I do to complete the story?”

…They may also be the last of the great session crews, before home studios, Pro Tools and GarageBand made studio ensembles superfluous. With them, a style of pop – and of making records – came to an end. “I’m running around with a baton in front of me and there’s no one to hand it to,” says Sklar. Asked to name their successors, producer Rick Rubin – who occasionally uses a small, hand-picked combo when recording with acts like Adele and the Dixie Chicks – pauses. “I’m not sure,” he says. “You don’t really need bands anymore.”

Kortchmar, Kunkel, Wachtel and Sklar have been approached about participating in a rock & roll fantasy camp devoted to rhythm sections. “If one of your ambitions is to hang out with Sammy Hagar, you’ll be disappointed with us,” Kortchmar says. “But we want to demonstrate what it’s like to play in an ensemble. That isn’t taught much by anyone.”

[Photo Credit: Joe Martz]

Rest in Peace, George Jones. A true Legend.

Ah One Two, ah One Two.

[Featured Image Via: Third Eye Photography]

Our man in Tokyo has a jazz radio show.

Dig it.

[Photo Via: Take the Coltrane]

Check out this long piece on the D.O.C. by Alex Pappademas in Playboy.

Who the hell is the D.O.C.? It’s been nearly 25 years since the rapper released his astoundingly great debut album, No One Can Do It Better. It was produced by Dr. Dre when Dre was churning out hot product at an ironic-in-retrospect pace: In a single year Dre made the D.O.C.’s album, as well as N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton and N.W.A co-founder Eazy-E’s solo debut, Eazy-Duz-It. The D.O.C. was a cocky, charismatic young rapper with a knotty, complex flow—his delivery had more bob-and-weave than your average West Coast rapper’s, and he reminded people of East Coast guys like Rakim. The kid with the golden voice, he called himself. Within three months he’d sold half a million records—until injuries to his vocal cords sustained in a car accident rendered him barely able to speak and totally unable to rap.

After that, the D.O.C. was a living ghost. He made two would-be comeback albums, but his real career existed behind the scenes. It became an open secret that he’d ghostwritten rhymes for Dre on The Chronic and 1999’s 2001 and polished lines for Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle. The D.O.C. was a fixer, a problem solver, a hip-hop Winston Wolf. Once a breakout star, he now existed in hip-hop as a legend in the background of other people’s rhymes. Dre shouted him out (“Like my nigga D.O.C., no one can do it better”) at the end of “Nuthin’ but a G Thang,” the first single from The Chronic. More than 10 years later, so did Brooklyn-born Jay-Z on “Public Service Announcement”—“HOV, not D.O.C./But similar to the letters, no one can do it better.”

From Kottke, here is a link to Lester Bang’s obit for Elvis:

It was the autumn of 1971, and two tickets to an Elvis show turned up at the offices of Creem magazine, where I was then employed. It was decided that those staff members who had never had the privilege of witnessing Elvis should get the tickets, which was how me and art director Charlie Auringer ended up in nearly the front row of the biggest arena in Detroit. Earlier Charlie had said, “Do you realize how much we could get if we sold these fucking things?” I didn’t, but how precious they were became totally clear the instant Elvis sauntered onto the stage. He was the only male performer I have ever seen to whom I responded sexually; it wasn’t real arousal, rather an erection of the heart, when I looked at him I went mad with desire and envy and worship and self-projection. I mean, Mick Jagger, whom I saw as far back as 1964 and twice in ’65, never even came close.

There was Elvis, dressed up in this ridiculous white suit which looked like some studded Arthurian castle, and he was too fat, and the buckle on his belt was as big as your head except that your head is not made of solid gold, and any lesser man would have been the spittin’ image of a Neil Diamond damfool in such a getup, but on Elvis it fit. What didn’t? No matter how lousy his records ever got, no matter how intently he pursued mediocrity, there was still some hint, some flash left over from the days when…well, I wasn’t there, so I won’t presume to comment. But I will say this: Elvis Presley was the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America (and thereby to the nation itself, since putting “popular arts” and “America” in the same sentence seems almost redundant). It has been said that he was the first white to sing like a black person, which is untrue in terms of hard facts but totally true in terms of cultural impact. But what’s more crucial is that when Elvis started wiggling his hips and Ed Sullivan refused to show it, the entire country went into a paroxysm of sexual frustration leading to abiding discontent which culminated in the explosion of psychedelic-militant folklore which was the sixties.

I mean, don’t tell me about Lenny Bruce, man – Lenny Bruce said dirty words in public and obtained a kind of consensual martyrdom. Plus which Lenny Bruce was hip, too goddam hip if you ask me, which was his undoing, whereas Elvis was not hip at all, Elvis was a goddam truck driver who worshipped his mother and would never say shit or fuck around her, and Elvis alerted America to the fact that it had a groin with imperatives that had been stifled. Lenny Bruce demonstrated how far you could push a society as repressed as ours and how much you could get away with, but Elvis kicked “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” out the window and replaced it with “Let’s fuck.” The rest of us are still reeling from the impact. Sexual chaos reigns currently, but out of chaos may flow true understanding and harmony, and either way Elvis almost singlehandedly opened the floodgates. That night in Detroit, a night I will never forget, he had but to ever so slightly move one shoulder muscle, not even a shrug, and the girls in the gallery hit by its ray screamed, fainted, howled in heat. Literally, every time this man moved any part of his body the slightest centimeter, tens or tens of thousands of people went berserk. Not Sinatra, not Jagger, not the Beatles, nobody you can come up with ever elicited such hysteria among so many. And this after a decade and a half of crappy records, of making a point of not trying.

Marley Marl: Droppin’ Science. Man, these two videos are great.

From Wired, some fun. Cover Songs: Famous Albums as Books.

Picking up on yesterday’s Gram Parsons post, here is an interview with Emmy Lou Harris in the New York Times:

You blossomed as a songwriter relatively late.

Well, there were so many songs that were already written that I wanted to sing. Really, I don’t know why I avoided it. Sometimes I have to be backed into a corner. After “Wrecking Ball” I wanted to continue on that path, that sort of sound, but I felt that I had to bring something else to the table besides my voice. At about the same time Rodney and I were visiting Guy [Clark] and Susannah, and Guy looked me right in the eye and he said: “You need to write your next record. I don’t care if it takes you five years.” And I think it did.

Gram Parsons was your first mentor and you lost him at a tender age. Does he continue to influence you?

I started out being a fanatical lover of folk music. Country music, even though I was exposed to it, I just thought that I couldn’t be bothered with it. I could not hear the subtlety in it, I couldn’t hear the poetry in it. I was a Joan Baez wannabe. But Gram, he heard something in my voice. He thought I could sing country music. I started as a harmony singer, that was his way to kind of sneakily turn me onto this extraordinary body of music, and in singing country music I really found the place that my voice was supposed to be. It also made me appreciate the joys of working with a band, which meant a drummer, which was anathema to folk singers. I can’t imagine that I would have gotten to the place I am artistically or even vocally, if it hadn’t been for Gram.

Via Black Book, here’s on Eileen Myles on Gram Parsons.

Over at Philadelphia Magazine, DJ Jazzy Jeff remembers He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper:

Before we started on that album, we were in the process of doing a DJ album, and we already had those songs done, so when we started recording songs for He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, I was like, “Yo, why don’t we put both of these albums together and just do a double album?” It was kinda funny because no one had ever thought to do that. We just made the suggestion, and Jive was like, “Yo, that might be great. It would be the first rap double album.”

So, we already had half of that done, and we just started piecing together the songs and figuring out which ones we were gonna have on the record. One of the shows that we did was at Union Square in New York, and it just so happens that [New York radio DJ] Mr. Magic taped it. I just did a DJ routine and didn’t even think anyone was taping it. We did that at every show. He started playing the show on the radio, and people were calling in and requesting that part. It got so big that it really helped me as a DJ, especially in New York. So, we called Mr. Magic and asked if we could have a copy of the tape because I had suggested we put that on the album, too. So “Live at Union Square” was actually a cassette recording of us performing at Union Square.

J Dilla’s vinyl weighs a ton.

Via Dust and Grooves: Everybody’s Got a Thing.

The A.V. Club interviews Mr. Wunnerfulness himself–Prince Paul:

AVC: “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’” (from 1991’s De La Soul Is Dead for De La Soul)

PP: I remember the big deal about that was having Russell Simmons come in and do the vocal intro at the beginning of the song. Russell was my manager as a producer for a hot second, and he was also a manager for Stetsasonic. And I remember just how hard it was to even get him in a meeting. But after De La Soul did so well, it just took a phone call for him to come down to the studio. He was so eager and everybody wanted to be down so much, it just showed me the power of what a hit record can do for you. That, to me, was the shining moment of that song. It was fun making it. It was uptempo and everything else, and there are a lot of layers and samples. Once again, Pos had the main loop for the song, and it was just us kind of building around that loop, but it was like, “Wow, we got Russell on here.”

AVC: Was it your idea to have Russell on?

PP: I don’t remember whose idea it was, to be honest. I think it came from the guys. Who it came from, I don’t know, but I just remember that he was real happy to be there. I was like, “Wow,” because it was hard enough to get the guy in a meeting but he was on time and ready to record. So that was kind of nice.