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A couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of the Ultimate Break Beats collection. For those who aren't familiar with it, the title undoubtedly sounds like a half-assed collection of samples, a "Now That's What I Call Music" for lazy crate diggers. When Street Beat originally released UBB in the 80's, way before the days of discogs and the-breaks.com, it was one of the only ways for aspiring producers to get their hands on the source material for most of the samples being used at the time. With almost two hundred classic break records, it serves as a blueprint for virtually every hip hop song released up to roughly 1989. While working my way through the collection, I came across a song I hadn't heard in years, one of my all time favorite breaks: Babe Ruth's The Mexican. Have a listen:
Sample Thursdays - The Mexican
What makes The Mexican so interesting - aside from the incredible guitar riff - is the fact that it's managed to become one of the most important records in hip hop despite the fact that it's hardly ever been sampled. To understand its importance, we've got to go all the way back to the start of hip hop, to the Bronx in the early 70's where Kool Herc was on the verge of setting off the entire movement with his revolutionary idea of looping break beats. As Kool Herc tells it (taken from Kool Herc: The Story):
One night, I was waiting for the record to play out. Maybe there [were] dancers waiting for this particular break. I could have a couple more records got the same break in it - I wonder, how it be if I put them all together and I told them: "I'm going to try something new tonight. I'm going to call it a merry-go-round." The B-Boys, as I call it, the energetic person, they're waiting just to release this energy when this break comes in.'
The first "merry-go-round" break that Herc played started out with James Brown's Give it up or turn it loose, which faded into the Incredible Bongo Band's Apache before closing out with The Mexican. The b-boys that used to show up to Herc's parties went nuts for the merry-go-round and from there it became a staple of virtually every b-boy competition that's ever been held.
Here's a video interview of Herc discussing, and playing, the merry-go-round break:
Kool Herc discusses the merry-go-round break.
And here's a video of b-boy Born performing to The Mexican break:
B-Boy Born breaks to The Mexican.
While the song has remained an essential element of the b-boy culture, very rarely does it get sampled by hip hop producers. In the 80's Afrika Bambaataa made use of it for Planet Rock, the Jungle Brothers sampled it for On The Run, and Doug E. Fresh (respect due!) cut it up Africa. More recently, Sugar Ray built their first pop hit Fly around the sample, and R Kelly flipped it for Dancing with a Rich Man. Perhaps the best use of the sample can be found on Organized Konfusion's Prisoner of War:
Organized Konfusion - Prisoners of War
As for Babe Ruth, the English band never found much lasting success outside of The Mexican. One member of the group went on to join the rock band Whitesnake, while the rest of the group disbanded in 1976. The song itself has been remade numerous times since its release in 1972 on the album First Base.
Finally, here's a live version of the song from 1974:
Babe Ruth - The Mexican (Live)
4/8/2010 9:45:51 PM posted by Fresh