Mojo's 'Roots of Hip Hop' comp - C/D?

Listening to it right now. Bloody lovely.

tracklist

1. flash – adventures on the wheels of steel
2. lee dorsey – get out my life woman
3. lowell fulsom – tramp
4. rufus thomas – itch and scratch (pt.1)
5. bar kays – in the whole
6. mad lads – no strings attached
7. james brown – give it up or turnit a loose
8. blood sweat and tears – lucretia mac evil
9. jb’s – the grunt (pts 1 & 2)
10. dramatics – get & get down
11. al green – here I am, come and take me
12. flaming ember – gotta get away
13. jimmy castor bunch – just begun
14. kool & the gang – NT
15. cymande – bra
16. parliament – flashlight
17. fatback band – king tim III
18. funky four + 1 – that’s the joint

I own loads of compilations like this, but I only have 8 of those, I think. Looking forward to hearing it.

Bar Kay's "In the Hole" is greatness, but if they really wanted to impress, they should have chosen "Streetwalker" which kind of trumps the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", and is probably 10x funkier. Obv "The Grunt" is classic (invents the PE siren scream), and "N.T." is probably Kool & the Gang's best jam. However, there's no way BS&T needs to be on here when there are countless other funk jams that are way easier to license for a comp.

No Dennis Alcapone / Big Youth / U-Roy?

No Gil Scott-Heron / Last Poets?

as i know 0,0 about the roots of hiphop (james brown's the only one i'd think of) or hiphop in general, i shall buy a copy for educational purposes :)

I once heard a rap song by Chuck Berry. Must be the oldest rap record ever recorded. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It was on his eight disc (or something) box-set.

who can tell me what any of these songs have to do with current hiphop???

mojos 'the roots of hiphop back when it was actually good', i mean i love breaks comps and i guess this is a nice introduction if you really dont know any of these songs but the title is retarded

like almost all Mojo comps it seems like a mix of the blindingly obvious (if good) and the intermittently unknown and/or ridiculous. ("Lucretia McEvil?") I guess it's an excuse to buy the magazine, but once upon an increasingly distant time ago, no such thing was needed.

well you see trife, these songs were sampled heavily 10-15 years ago in a music genre called 'hip hop'. current 'hip hop' comes from this, hence the similarity in the genre name.

don't try to tell him about anything that exists before he started paying attention

this comp is ass but no shit - mojo + hip-hop???

Anyone who has a bad word to say about a compilation that features Lee Dorsey in any way shape or form = fool.

I mean, you could just shove "Ya Ya" into the middle of that Kings of Leon album and it'll automatically make it into my top ten for the year.

no the comp is fine though of course very basic for a breaks comp, im just saying it seems a little 'hiphop = p.e. and de la and 87-93 and oh flash of course and THATS IT!!'

Yeah, but it's "Roots of Hip Hop", as in "what came before hip-hop right at the start". It's like complaining that Sonny Liston's dad isn't related to Lennox Lewis.

I can't honestly say I give a stuff about how relevant the thing is to hi-hop, it's just a very good CD that hangs together all nicely and stuff.

would have been even better if david holmes had mixed it as was originally planned - as per ta note on the back of the sleevenotes. as a freebie i reckon its mighyty fineany cd that namechecks justin warfield is getting bonus points from me).

suspect/hope phil alexander + angus batey are going to increase profile of hiphop to the mojo masses (roots/common article last month). could be the hiphop wars all over again as per nme 86-88 (??)

bring it on. tis wonderful to see the genre getting some space.

even kid acnes album got space. and that lp is excellent fun.

best mojo in ages. and i haven't even read the strokes article. ho ho.
m.e

All Mojo comps are limited by what they can get cheap from outfits like Ace (primarily), Sanctuary, even Sony and Universal. Within that kind of limitation, it's not a bad comp, I don't think. You cld do a lot worse, for a freebie.

Also, in the mag itself there's an interesting 'oral history' of hip-hop's alleged 'golden age' - from 1986 (Run DMC's 'Raising Hell') to 1992 (Dre's 'The Chronic'). The latter rec's "nihilism effectively ended the parallel themes of activism, playful experimentation and increasing sonic edginess that ran through the best hip hop of the previous six years", according to the article's writer, Angus Batey. I don't know my hip-hop well enough to know if this is bullshit or not, but I do know that MY hip-hop 'golden age' wld prob. START w/ the Chronic (or the first NWA alb) and end roundabout the 2nd Wu-Tang alb, but that's a real rockist take, I know I know, why do you think I read fuckin' Mojo?

Question: why do I always find the hip-hop threads on ILM to be the most intimidating ones, the ones where ppl are least likely to enthuse/encourage/inform - is it a sign of a living music, that there's still these conflicts and schisms (the blues and jazz and country threads are always so polite!)

Re Chuck Berry -- yeah, it's probably "No Money Down," about buying a car. It's very, very early for him; somewhere between his second and fourth singles.

What the fuck is "Lucretia Mac Evil" doing on there? or anywhere?

i had the same reaction as trife actually that "breaks" != "roots" of hip-hop. if you wanted to make a case for the break sounds that most DIRECTLY "influenced" where hip-hop began as in preceded and paved the way for then yr. talking about discodiscodisco and maybe booker t and the mgs.

if you want to talk stylistic predecessors then yr. on a different track too and want talking blues etc.

and etc.

i mean this is like making a comp called "roots of heavy metal" with robert johnson, blind lemon, and verdi.

anyway jess if you don't give a damn don't throw it up.

psst Mojo writers if you're reading this can you make Sterling's roots of metal comp thanks.

I've not played the CD yet cos I'm not much of a funk fan. I thought the 87-93 article was kind of a wasted opportunity, tried to cram too much into 6 or so pages - their article on '78-'79 a few months ago was much better. There is a great bit in the article though where they bounce between quotes between Rakim and Chuck D and Chuck is all, yeah when we heard "I Know You Got Soul" we knew we had to take it to the next level, and they were the same, it was kind of a friendly rivalry etc etc. and Rakim just never mentions poor old Chuck AT ALL.

haha call it "Roots of HipHop" only then when you actually play it's ALL songs from "Off the Wall" and "Thriller"

thanks for comments y'all

i agree the title is problematic for reasons already stated. big surprise for me was how fully-formed "king tim III" is (as rap), I was expecting something much more embryonic/'proto'. this may be the first rap to be recorded, but are there not precursors on record somewhere? someone already mentioned last poets and scott heron but there's a missing link somehere (or is there?)

There are hundreds of precedents, funkwise and otherwise, that sound more like rap music than the Last Poets or Gil Scott-Heron do (and at least a couple that sound almost as much like rap music as "King Tim III" does -- "Here Comes the Judge" by Pigmeat Markham, for one.). You could do worse than consult the "Four Words to the Wack" chapter of the book *Accidental Evolution of Rock'n'Roll* by, um, somebody.

("King Tim III," though, is 1979 -- SAME year as "Rapper's Delight." So in a way, it's *not* a precedent; it's the actual animal.)

(...albiet the actual animal as done by a funk band, as the b-side of a song {"You're My Candy Sweet," right?) that was pretty much shlock. But funk bands -- Fred Wesley and the JBs, Parliament, Jimmy Castor Bunch, the Jackson Five, even Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes -- had been putting pretty obviously rapped-how-rapping-would-sound-in-1979 parts on the records for a few years by the point. And then there's reggae toasting, the talking blues, squaredance hoedowns, prison dozens, carnival auctioneer barking, DJ talkovers, Richard Pryor, Napoleon IV, Steve Martin, the Hombres, Bob Dylan, Jerry Reed, and a million other things that Mojo apparently somehow forgot about.)

Not to mention "Walk this Way." And Rufus Thomas. And Bo Diddley. etc.

(And I deprived Napoleon of his X, too. Oh well.)

He'll have a hard time peaking now (TS: calling it "X" vs. calling it "E")

Also: Lightning Rod's "Sport". That shit's GOT to be on there.