More Than Friends: "A Variety of Party People in Unity"

"Friends," Jody Watley's hit single with Eric B. & Rakim, is known as the first R&B-rap crossover to achieve commercial success. To my ears, the song skates the lines between those genres and house music. Indeed, like most of Watley's hits, it landed on the Dance charts. The song's video, directed by Jim Sonzero, captures its broad appeal. "The video notably blends b-boys, drag queens, and a variety of party people in unity for a good time capturing a slice of New York nightlife at the time," Watley says. "Fabulous and street in its realness without pandering, being contrived or sending a negative message, certain stereotypes or coonery. Proud." 

That theme also comes out with the aptly titled, club friendly "Friends" Unity mix produced by André Cymone. However, there's another remix that deserves note in the annals of Long Island hip-hop history. I'm talking about the Extended Version, produced by Hank Shocklee, Eric Sadler, and Paul Shabazz of the Bomb Squad. Shocklee would, of course, later team with Eric B. & Rakim for "Juice (Know the Ledge)," one of the duo's biggest and final hits. But the "Friends" Extended Version is, I believe, the first release on which we can hear Rakim rapping over Bomb Squad production in all its deconstructive kinetic glory. 

Years after Eric B. and Rakim disbanded, the God MC would again collaborate with Watley for the remix to "Off the Hook," the lead single from her 1998 album Flower. The producer of that remix is D-Dot, another name that should be familiar to hip-hop heads, if for very different reasons. By the time "Off the Hook" released, practically every successful R&B album had at least one rap collaboration and vice versa. If "Friends" started the trend, Bad Boy Records' Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie helped to make it the formula for crossover success. While "Off the Hook" might not be as remembered in hip-hop circles, it still managed to hit number-one on the Dance charts. And it also provided Rakim the opportunity to reflect on his prior collaboration with Watley. "At the time, we didn't even realize what was going on," he told MTV News. "I wasn't sure our people was gonna accept it, everybody feeling me like one of the hardcore artists. But then ... it blew up."

One more deep cut while we're on the topic of Jody Watley: Those familiar with her full body of work know that she first rose to stardom as a member of Shalamar. The funk group has been sampled by all manner of rap producers. Whether Eric B. & Rakim ever made use of their records, I can't say. However, I can say that Hempstead rapper True Mathematics' 1988 single "For the Lover in You" is essentially a rap version of Shalamar's 1980 track "This Is for the Lover In You," and in a final cherry-on-top-kind-of moment for this post, it's produced by none other than Hank Shocklee, Carl Ryder, and Eric Sadler. Hit the playlist below for all the above and then some.

Public Enemy + LL Cool J - Rebel Mama Said Knock You Out Without a Pause (Stretch Armstrong Blend)

 

Marley Marl deserves mention in this post's title as much as, if not more so than, LL Cool J, but when you hear that four-note vocal sample odds are your brain jumps to James in a boxing ring not Marlon in a recording studio. So it goes. This blend was mixed live on a January or February 1991 broadcast of the world-famous Stretch & Bobbito Show. After this, Stretch transitioned seamlessly into the full song, "Mama Said Knock You Out," but the blend is what grabs my attention, as it 1) is dope, 2) brings together two of the headliners of the 87 Def Jam Tour, and 3) in a roundabout kind of way, reconciles Rap Attack's infamous on-air diss of "Public Enemy No. 1" by placing Chuck and Flav's voices on beat over a Marley Marl loop. Talk about the magic of radio!

As it happens, in addition to the PE-LL dream team, this broadcast also featured songs from several other Long Island rappers, including EPMD ("I'm Mad"), Bolaji ("Massive Material"), and L.O.N.S. ("Where Do We Go From Here?"), and although I can't say for certain, we may even hear a young Zev Love X shouting out the latter group during Kurious's mic break around the 18:20 mark.

Public Enemy - "Fight The Power (2020 Remix)" feat. Nas, Rapsody, Black Thought, Jahi, YG & QuestLove

One YouTube comment reads, "Chuck D didn't need to write a new verse because the original is still as relevant as it was in 1989." That pretty much says it all.

Butch Cassidy's Funk Bunch - "On a DJ's Birthday"

"Mad rappers were coming up there, doing the same old
Sugar Hill Gang thing, but I came out with a cowboy hat
on, saying 'I'm the Outlaw of Funk.' Chuck introduced
me and said, 'We got Butch Cassidy here — I had never
called myself that before — and I ripped the microphone."

The electro-funk roots of Long Island hip-hop, particularly as pioneered in Roosevelt, are further exposed in "On a DJ's Birthday," the 1984 single released by Aaron Allen aka Butch Cassidy on TNT Records. The record also provides some of the earliest writing credits for Riddenhour (a misspelling of Ridenhour aka Chuck D, later of Public Enemy) and Eric Sadler (later of the Bomb Squad). Side note: could that be Chuck D playing Butch's pops around the 2:30 mark?

Speaking about "On a DJ's Birthday," Allen once said, "I think I was one of the first ones to have a rap single out on Long Island." According to my limited records at least, he's right, as the only other singles I've written about that go that far back are Spectrum City's Lies/Check Out the the Radio and LL Cool J's "I Need a Beat." (Key-Matic's "Breakin In Space," which, like "DJ's Birthday," was written by Charles Casseus could also be considered an LI rap single from 1984 especially in that it featured the Wizard K-Jee aka Keith Shocklee on the turntables.)

Though Allen was still part of the Spectrum City crew at this time and appeared on their aforementioned single, he contends "'DJ's Birthday' had nothing to do with Spectrum." Instead, he says, "Charles Casseus said he had this idea so I wrote some lines to it, got a deal with TNT Records and put it out. I don't know how I even got that deal." Regardless of how it happened, it did. Some 35 years later, yours truly found this record sitting still shrinkwrapped in the singles section at Massapequa Park's Infinity Records (now carrying LIRR01, cough-cough), and it's a personal rip of that copy streaming below.

True Life - Cocaine Crack (You Might Not Make It Back)

Something of a novelty record, "Cocaine Crack (You Might Not Make It Back" appears to be the only single released by Hempstead group True Life and one of only two records records from their label Top Shelf, "Connoisseur of Fine Music."

Released in 1986, it lists Eric Sadler (later of Bomb Squad fame) as a producer, though he (or someone claiming to be him on Discogs, which would be very weird) claims he was only in the studio and not involved in the making of the record. Sadler also tells us that listed songwriter W. Blunt II was "a police officer trying to make a statement record."

From the same Discogs comments section, we learn that Blunt's full name was William Charles Blunt aka Duce and that another listed songwriter, J. Eatman, went on to become Da Bandit, one half of a duo that put out an EP on Tuff City some eight years later. The other two songwriters, presumably pictured above, don't have any other readily identifiable credits, but with a little bit of poking around on Discogs, we find that Blunt was also credited on the other Top Shelf release, Silhouettes / Cream Tea, which came out the following year.

...And this is why Discogs is the best thing on the internet. Of course, respect due to Ingo Zoerntlein aka MC ZRock, a German YouTuber with a channel dedicated almost exlcusively to anti-drug raps.

DJ Moneyshot - Solid Steel and the Hour of Chaos

Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet on WBAUMarch 26, 1990

Today's date marks the 25th anniversary of the commercial release of Public Enemy's classic third album Fear Of A Black Planet. What you might not realize is that the album debuted, albeit to a much smaller audience, weeks earlier on Long Island college radio. (Public Enemy is of course in many ways a product of this scene, as Chuck D worked at Adelphi's WBAU alongside members of the Bomb Squad and actually met Flavor Flav [then known as MC DJ Flavor] in the studio there.) According to DJ WildMan Steve, Fear Of A Black Planet was played by DJ Jeff Foss on Hofstra University's 88.7 WRHU on Saturday, March 24, 1990 before its 90.3 WBAU debut on Monday, March 26.

Thanks to Long Island hip-hop icons Oxygen (aka Ox the Architect) and DJ WildMan Steve, the Internet now has a recording of this second local debut. To complement this long-lost radio set, we're posting it alongside the original Fear Of A Black Planet artwork by NASA illustrator B.E. Johnson.

"I don’t know why it took so long, nor do I care"

A graphic design major while at Adelphi, Chuck D
designed the now-iconic PE logo, using a picture of b-boy
E Love, which he cut out of the fanzine Right-On.

In anticipation of the It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet reissues, Chuck D spoke to Cuepoint about Public Enemy's past and the making of these classic albums. Just as these reissues are must-haves for all Long Island hip-hop completists, this article, "It Took A Nation: The Greatest Rap Album Gets Its Due," is instant must-read status.