I met with Mo Ostin at Warner
Brothers and I talked him into making the deal. It was
a great deal for him. In fact he tells people it was
one of the best three deals he ever made. It really
was profitable. It was a great deal for them but not
for us so after a few years we had to renegotiate."
The years between Tommy Boy's first blaze of electro-boogie
success and the renewal that came with De La Soul in
the late Eighties were distinguished by individual acts
or records, rather than an identifiable sound. Alongside
the Force M.D.'s, Brooklyn-based Stetsasonic was their
strongest signing in the post-electro period. With seven
members - Daddy-O, Prince Paul, Delite, Fruitkwan, DBC
and Wise - Stetsasonic pioneered a number of trends,
including a live drummer on stage and the use of jazz
samples.
"Go Stetsa" was a tough example of the kind
of sparse, scratch heavy records that were coming out
of Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island after 1985. Though
Stetsasonic kept up that energy in their music, their
productions became more elaborate, their subject matter
more thoughtful. With a Donald Byrd trumpet sample and
lyrics that defended the use of the sampler as a tool
that could revive the careers of fading artists, "Talkin'
All That Jazz", released in 1988, confronted critics
of hip-hop and sampling. "That really was an influential
record on a coupla levels." says Monica Lynch.
"Not only did it have this really great jazz groove.
Also, it addressed the whole sampling issue in a very
upfront way. Stetsasonic, and say Gang Starr, were really
experimenting and mixing jazz with hip-hop. It was just
that sampling at that time was a very grey area. It's
still a controversial thing and there was that big argument
over whether it was theft or art."
Stetsasonic's "Sally" was another track that
looked back to the old-school by using new sampling
technology to cut up classic breaks like "Mustang
Sally" and James Brown loops. Early hip-hop DJs
like Flash and Bambaataa had mixed an incredible range
of records, including novelty speech albums and TV themes.
For a generation raised on television re-runs of old
cartoons, theme tunes were a favourite source. Tommy
Boy's response to this mid-Eighties craze was Choice
M.C.'s "Gordy's Groove", featuring Fresh Gordon,
with a hook lifted from one of the most popular shows
in American television history, Andy of Mayberry, with
Andy Griffith.
The other approach to sampling was to go straight to
the source. "Unity", the 1984 collaboration
between Afrika Bambaataa and James Brown, was an early
instance of hiphop embracing its roots. A six-part plea
for world peace, the track was produced by Silverman
with Bambaataa and played by a group of musicians that
included Keith LeBlanc, Doug Wimbish, Skip McDonald
and Robin Halpin. "James Brown was wild,"
laughs Monica. "He would call me on the phone all
the time, always called me Miss Lynch. I remember once
he told me he liked his women shaped like Coke bottles.
I've never worked with anyone, before or since, who
has been so great with his fans. Walking down the street
with him or getting out of a limo with him was an unbelievable
experience. Instant recognition wherever he went and
always very kind and humble. It was pretty hysterical
to hang out with him in off-hours when he had the pink
rollers in his hair, the whole nine yards. He was from
a different era, a different place, and he was a real
gentleman. Very demanding but a real character.
"I know that Bambaataa was absolutely thrilled
to be working with him. He wasn't intimidated but of
course, he had the utmost respect. Bambaataa, first
and foremost, is a fan. I have these lists that Bambaataa
would hand write on yellow note pads, his list of the
funk forefathers in order of importance. James Brown
was always up at the top. He had nothing but the highest
reverence for James Brown. You could easily envisage
a lot of other scenarios where the hip-hop or R&B
producer de jour comes in and says, 'OK, now we're gonna
do this'. It wasn't like that."
In 1983, Monica Lynch had pitched a mailroom and messenger
job to Joey Gardner, the 12" dance records buyer
at Crazy Eddy.
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