Let Your Horns Blow!

GUEST POST!!!
_________________

The Steve Martin - EPMD
The Ruler's Back - Slick Rick
Straighten It Out - Pete Rock & CL Smooth
Jump Around (Remix) - House Of Pain
Here Come The Lords - Lords Of The Underground
Bucktown - Smif N' Wesson
Iced Down Medallions - Royal Flush
That's When Ya Lost - Souls of Mischief

What’s up funksters? It’s TiVo Thursday, a day late again and definitely a dollar short.

Hip-hop evolves quickly, both lyrically and musically. Years later, we can look back and recognize the trends as they were. Something’s been bugging me about hip-hop beats these days. I’m not the only one to say it, but different people have varying reasons for the general disappointment on the musical side of things these days, as the MCs have clearly run laps around the vast majority of beat-makers out there.

When you take a look at a preferred era in hip-hop, about 1988-93, give or take a few months, the beats weren’t complicated, but they were better. I’m no music student, but even I could tell some were simple drum tracks, some were samples from familiar songs, and the DJs and producers from that era we now regard as great simply carved out their own sound.

Two of the best, of course, were Pete Rock and DJ Premier. Actually, scratch that were, they still are.

But when I think back to the two of them in their prime, it makes me wonder: What the hell happened to the horn loop?

Seriously, it’s a lost art.

Take Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s seminal classic T.R.O.Y. As soon as I think of that song, I can hear the horn loop in my head, followed by Pete Rock whispering “they reminisce, they reminisce.”

Pete had some other great horn-laced classics. Straighten it Out. I Got A Love. One in a Million. But the best might be his remix of House of Pain’s Jump Around, which I prefer over the overplayed original. The horns on those tracks simply defined the songs.

And the Premier of that era pulled some great horns out of the vaults too. I’m sure a better crate-digger/music student could tell you where they came from and what instruments are used, but for me the horn section takes me back to certain places.

I’m standing on the field at Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees, N.J. circa 1992 anytime I hear the horns from Gangstarr’s Check the Technique (a very underrated song off Step in the Arena, by the way). I remember being stunned that our rich-kid rivals were using a non-single off Gangstarr’s second album as a warm-up song. I can hear “you puny protozoa…” blasting over the loudspeaker. Then my memory devolves into a goal-line stand and something about a 19-8 loss.

Primo collected a couple other notches on the horn belt: Love Sick, Ex Girl to the Next Girl, off the same album, and the Dwyck remix “horny” instrumental, which I only have on cassette single. (Damn, my son will barely know what a cassette is when he grows up, except for the stunning collection of A.D.O.R. and J.J. Fad maxi-singles in our home).

Pete and Primo may have been the best horn users, but they certainly weren’t the only ones.

EPMD rocked the horn set while trying to blow up The Steve Martin dance on 1988’s Strictly Business.

Slick Rick became Rick the Ruler to a horn background. On 1989’s The Great Adventures of…, the song The Ruler’s Back was as horny as a single dude in a strip club.

Lords of the Underground blessed Here Come the Lords with an identifiable horn piece. (By the way, one of my favorite groups of all time. Where’ve they been?)

Look at how versatile the instrument was: Royal Flush ripped Iced Down Medallions and its horns. There were strong horns on Smif N Wessun’s Bucktown. There were little horn parts at least, on Shyheim’s “On and On,” Black Moon’s “I Gotcha Opin (Remix)” and Souls of Mischief’s “That’s When Ya Lost.”

There was even DJ Kool and his “hit me with the horns Twenty” on that club hit he had around 1997. (Ed Note: Let Me Clear My Throat)

So what ever happened to the horn? Maybe it was all done before and it was time to move on.

Still, even if it never comes back in vogue, us Golden Agers can always appreciate that what the RZA did for the piano and the Beatnuts did for the flute, Pete Rock and Premier’s early work did for the horn section.

Follow-up

On the heels of last week’s lost-member-of-the-group rant, listening to Onyx’s Throw Ya Gunz reminded me of another lost member. There were four bald heads orginially, but over time, the same Big DS that Fredro, Sticky and the other dude that never made it into acting were planning to go bust out of jail was apparently busted out of the group instead.

Next week

“My Philosophy,” “Time’s Up,” others: Still relevant?

The Sendoff

A’ight man, I have to quit. Clicking the clips on Sandbox Automatic to verify a few horn sets got me interested in purchasing The Best of Schoolly D and the 12-inch of Just Ice’s Way Back. That’s why I stay away from those sites. It’s like drugs to me.

Until next Thursday (or Friday)…

TiVo

* As an added bonus, here are some of the funky jawns that I'm listening to while drifting in and out of an Acetamenaphine (sp?) induced haze:

24 Carat Black - 24 Carat Black
I Wanna Do Something Freaky To You (Non-Vocal) - Leon Haywood
Celestial Blues - Gary Bartz Ntu Troop
A Girl Like You - Edwyn Collins
What Planet - DJ Day
Bam Bam - Sister Nancy
Case Of The PTA - L.O.N.S.

As a side note: Happy Birthday to Jer Young...you bama you! And Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it.

I'll be back next week in Full Force MD's.
Keep on Funkin'
Brother B.