Another fantastic soulful track from Men I Trust. They are on fire right now. The music video captures the 70’s-80’s skating rink experience brilliantly. The beat has the exact funky swing as Funkadelic’s “You’ll Like It Too.” Eric B. and Rakim sampled that in “I Know You Got Soul.” I’m looking forward to mashing Rakim’s rap to this Men I Trust track. They will match perfectly.
Zara Larsson is a complete headcase, but I’ll enjoy her zippy pop-tune in spite of this. This one definitely has some similarities to The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights.”
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.
It’s doesn’t bring much to the table melodically, but it definitely does bring a naughty funk groove to the dance floor. Hard to not get down to this one.
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!)
Groovy pop song with a great melody and a syncopated beat you can get down to. This song demonstrates that strategically placed gaps and moments of brief silence are an effective tool to make a song interesting, dynamic, and less fatiguing. I generally don’t care too much about lyrics, but I find these a little dumb. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting them, but they seem to be criticizing people who want stuff and assume that it’s born out of a desire to belittle others. Uh, no. Most people want a nice house to live in because they want a nice house to live in. Whatever. I still enjoy the tune.