The Message

from the 7” single, white label, 2002



There seems to be an ever-dwindling number of hip-hop producers willing to use samples when lacing beats, a trend which started a while ago but really gained speed after the Neptunes style blew up; this is a sad fact, in my humble opinion, because so much of what I love about early hip-hop is the remixed beats. Thankfully however, there are a handful of producers out there that remain on the quest, eternally digging in crates, seeking the rarest and dopest samples of all time---both of the gentlemen involved on this track belong to that club and sit near the top of the pile. Jay Dee (a.k.a. J Dilla) and Madlib (a.k.a. Quasimoto), known collectively as Jaylib, are responsible for some of the most soulful and farthest out beats ever put to wax, respectively. This particular single wasn’t included on the full length 2xLP they released called Champion Sound, and my guess for why that is the case centers around the topic above; namely, musicians are so lawsuit-happy anymore, there’s no way they could’ve paid for the rights to either the song this is based upon, or the sample employed within the track. Dilla handles the production tasks here, and does an astounding job at re-imagining the classic hip-hop single of the same name, a monumental task if you consider the importance of that original; no way to know for sure, but I have to think Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel were impressed with the way this remix of their masterpiece came out. The beat is based around a loop that Dilla pinched from one of my favorite bands, that being Stereolab, and this alone is proof of Dilla’s incredible depth and breadth of musical taste---how many hip-hoppers do you think recognized that loop?...not many. Madlib throws down his typical stoned, montone method of rapping, and gives us a nice revision of the original chorus, “…don’t push me just ‘cause we close to the edge, I’m tryin’ not to lose the skin I’m in…it’s not worth it sometimes it makes me wonder if we’re all going under…” The track ends with a very strange coda of tribal-sounding mayhem, like we jetted into a hut in the Amazon somewhere, very weird and excellent. Best line, by far, “…rats in the front room, vultures in the back, crackhead’s in the alley with the baseball bat…” R.I.P. Dilla, there will never be another…