Who Sampled Ya?

Nothing new under the sun / What has been will be again....

So you think Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" & Snoop's "Gin & Juice" were all original cuts that just evolved in the mind of the artist out of nowhere? Think again.

So much of today's popular music has deep roots in the rich fertile fields of the seventies/eighties. There was something unique about that period that produced such brilliant music from the likes of Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Rolling Stones, Queen..the list goes on. I am not sure why the music of that era was arguably better than the music of today. It could be that after the socio-cultural & political upheavals of the sixties with the Vietnam War, two Kennedy assassinations as well as the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, the liberation struggles of the "Third World" nations, the oil crisis & a whole host of other interrelated issues caused undue stress on the psyche of the people both domestically and internationally. Music as a whole reacted and served as a valve to relieve these pressures, hence the emphasis on peace, understanding, and having a good time on the dance floor and in the bedroom. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On", Stevie Wonder's "Songs In The Key" (& "Talking Book"), Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall", James Brown's, "Sex Machine" are just a few of the gems that the seventies produced. What other era produced so much quality & originalty?

I assembled the following playlist to highlight a few of my favorite Hip Hop cuts that have their origins in the seventies/eighties musical landscape. Many of the samples are exact copies of the originals with a loopy bass added here and drum machine added there. I aint knocking it as I enjoy it all--I just want folks (especially the youths) to understand the debt owed to the greats of the past. .
Enjoy!!

::MixMasterE::

..where private chaos and social outrage meet....

We're living in a strange time.

This politico-economic system that a vast number has had so much faith in for so long (in spite of its glaring contradictions), is on the ropes. And what's stranger still is that the same class of folks who have always milked the system and jerked our chains are the same exact folks who have been put in charge to "rescue" this massive systemic failure!

President Obama, indubitably a great thinker, orator and charismatic leader who has inspired the world that anything is possible, is in many ways, like all the Presidents before him, a pawn to the powerful corporate entities as the TARP bailouts can attest to. The rise of the corporation has pretty much usurped/diffused the power of the people and as usual, we are left holding the vaseline. Electoral politics, no matter how persuasive and appealing, is quite shallow as it is built on the sandy shores of false promises.

Nothing short of a massive social upheaval/paradigm shift can reverse the charm and power of the sophisticated snake-oil salesmen with impressive degrees who command our industries and government. Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela & Evo Morales all understood one thing: Power concedes NOTHING without the people taking it to the streets and going toe to toe with those who want to keep things as is. Persistence is key as caving into complacency is oh! so damn easy! Being creatures of comfort, we tend to go the route of least resistance even if doing so is against our collective interests--aint that the truth?

Read between the lines & follow the money & you will find the Puppet Masters who laughingly cast the shadows that seduce the world......

Peace

::MixMasterE::