Brass Trax

Hip hop has never had much time for soul music from the early sixties. If you looked in the crates of a hip hop producer, you’d think that R&B started in 1966. With a few notable exceptions, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” springs to mind, no classic hip hop breaks came from the first half of the decade.

It may be that 1966 was an annus mirabilis for soul artists. James Brown’s success had a lot to do with that. Artists quickly copped his stylistic innovations, and the commercial flood doors opened for southern soul. Technological innovations did too. Improved recording equipment in the studio and the spread of stereo for playback expanded the possibilities for enterprising producers. Whatever the case, something R&B indelibly changed in 1966, and the music that came before that year has not appealed to hip hop.

Consider the track record. Cypress Hill used a sample from Gene Chandler’s 1962 hit “Duke of Earl” on its track “Hand on the Pump,” but the sample sounds like an afterthought. The tune’s drum break comes from Junior Walker’s “Shotgun” (1974), and the “Duke of Earl” sample just fills in during the bridge. Except for the instant of recognition, Cypress Hill could have sampled three syllables from any song at random and ended up with pretty much the same track.

“Hand on the Pump” by Cypress Hill

“Duke of Earl” by Gene Chandler

“Shotgun” by Junior Walker

At the other extreme is Boogie Down Productions. “Part Time Suckers,” a track from the 1988 album By All Means Necessary, is as basic as hip hop gets: a staccato drumbeat and KRS-ONE’s lyrics, all too often sung. Nothing in the production hints that the drum track came from a 1963 bubblegum soul tune, Smokey Robinson’s “Mickey’s Monkey,” a dance craze number. The things that would have marked it as a slice of early sixties soul—the girl group backing singers, the boogie-woogie piano stabs—were erased from the track.

“Part Time Suckers” by Boogie Down Productions

“Mickey’s Monkey” by Smokey Robinson

Slick Rick is an exception, but then he almost always is. “Mona Lisa” interpolates a snippet of Dionne Warwick’s 1964 number “Walk on By.” It’s the tell-off that ends the song, the way that Mona Lisa gets Rick back after he leaves her on the curb. In a sense, it’s the emotional core of the tune. The Ruler’s 1994 comeback track “Sittin’ in My Car” weaves whole cloth from Billy Stewart’s “Sitting in the Park” (1965). Surprisingly, Slick Rick’s lament about a bizarre love triangle (he bags his girl and her best friend but cannot find true love) ends up being less creepy than Stewart’s original, about a man waiting obsessively in a park for his belle.

“Mona Lisa” by Slick Rick

“Walk On By” by Dionne Warwick

“Sittin’ in My Car” by Slick Rick

“Sitting in the Park” by Billy Stewart

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