Transcribing vinyl takes a lot of time and effort. If I can find a recording I like on a streaming service, I usually don’t bother. But sometimes, the versions of the song I want to listen to exist only on the 12″ single. In other cases, such as in this wonderful piece of hip-hop history by The World’s Famous Supreme Team, the recording that’s available on Spotify and Amazon Music is nothing short of a disaster. Whoever mastered it and encoded it completely destroyed it. They loudened it, crushed all of its dynamic range, and turned it into an unlistenable, splattery mess. It’s such a shame because this is the only recording many people will ever have access to. Go ahead and give it a listen and then compare it to this recording of the vinyl 12″ single that was competently mastered at Sterling Sound in 1984. It makes all the time and effort worth it.

You’ll notice that there are no iTunes of Spotify links for this one. That’s because this record doesn’t seem to exist in streaming format. So I took my vinyl 12″ single and carefully recorded it. I’ve recently posted a tutorial on how to do this. Please enjoy this beautiful hip-hop classic from 1981! (Both vocal and instrumental versions are included!)