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After putting up the boundary-pushing track the other day from Bless 1 and Micronaut, I got into a discussion with my man Mike about some of the previous, and largely unsuccessful, collaborations between the hip hop and electronic music worlds. One song that he mentioned was Digital, featuring KRS-One and British Drum N Bass legend Goldie, which was released as a single back in 1997. I had never heard of it before, and since it's rare that I come across a new (to my ears) song from the Blastmaster, I thought I'd track it down. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a direct mp3 of this track but I did find a site that was hosting it. You'll need flash installed on your browser to listen to it:
It's not the best work of KRS-One's career (that would be this song), but it's certainly not the worst attempt to produce a "club hop" song.
Update: Wax left a great response to this, and since many of you don't venture into the comments section I'm putting it up here on the front page. Quoth Wax:
"Hip hop mc'ing and jungle drum n bass have never really taken off, which is funny, because jungle music itself had a hardcore dancehall ragga muffin aspect to it back in the day. This in itself led to chatting or toasting MCs running over uk pirate radio stations, the bulk of which were jungle pirates from the tops of housing districts... which led to even classier chatting/flowing when jungle morphed into a more palatable-to-whitey music, drum n bass.
Drum n bass sprung off UK Garage in the late 90s, when it got too dark and the girls ran from the clubs. UK garage led into 2 step, which is when it started getting MC's chatting over it, which led to grime, which now has led to a music called dubstep. crazy ass british and their genre classifying.
Some recommended listening:
UK Apache & Shy FX "Original Nuttah" - hardcore jungle/ragga MC'ing - a classic in the dnb world
LTJ Bukem with MC Conrad - Live at Ministry" - an example of more groovin drum n bass, with conrad lightly chatting/toasting over it.. I've seen these guys live and it is a treat
Virus Syndicate - Slow Down" - this is UK Grime - you can hear the drum n bass influences, lots of bass, grimey ass MC'ing -
in essence, the Goldie/KRS collabo was an attempt to capture the rising wave of electronica in the US - in 97 you had chemical brothers, prodigy, underworld all blowing up. Now imagine if the blastmaster had put in some work and done some of his reggae patois over Goldie beats? this could have been dope, but in 97 there was such a backlash in the UK drum n bass scene against ragge dancehall jungle, it wouldnt have worked for that market. "
3/05/2007 07:00:01 PM posted by Fresh