Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
Despite the atrocious acting, over-the-top stereotypes and dubious artistic merits of the blaxploitation film genre, I find myself unable to turn the channel whenever any of those films comes on t.v. The Mack, Superfly, Dolemite, Foxy Brown - I've seen them all, more times than I'd care to admit. The original blaxploitation flick, and easily my favorite of the bunch, is Shaft, a movie that benefits greatly from its soundtrack, produced by Isaac Hayes. About a month ago I flipped on the television and came across a channel playing Shaft during a scene with gangleader Bumpy, played by Tony Award-winning actor Moses Gunn, and his theme song playing in the background, "Bumpy's Lament."
After seeing the movie, I was reminded of a song off of Lil' Kim's album Hardcore, Drugs. The song samples a version of Bumpy's Lament, a sample that I have been trying to track down since I first heard Kim's debut album over a decade ago. Lyrically, the most notable part of the song features Lil' Kim attempting to spit a bar in Arabic with predictably mixed results. It's an otherwise unexceptional track from a lyrical standpoint, filled as it is with the typical blinged out bravado that became the trademark of every mid-90's Bad Boy hit. It's a safe bet that, at this early stage of her career, the verse itself was written by Biggie - and I have to admit I've always been amused at the thought process that must have been required for a 300+ pound man to sit down and pen sexually explicit lyrics from Lil' Kim's point of view - who lends his own vocal talents for the hook.
Lil Kim - Drugs (youtube link, with full version of the song)
Kim's lyrics may not have been all that impressive but the beat, on the other hand, was tremendous (the Nineties Babies and coke rap aficionados in the audience may be more familiar with the beat from the Clipse's Ultimate Flow off of We Got It For Cheap vol. 2). Produced by Fabian Muzik, it's built around one of the greatest samples I have ever heard. The liner notes for the album credit the source as "Sylvester - Bumpies Lament," which turned out to be a bit of misinformation that led me on several expeditions into some rather dingy record shops throughout the greater NJ/NY area, searching for a record that, it would turn out, never existed. Drugs came out years before sites like Wikipedia or The-Breaks existed, so all I had to go on was the name "Sylvester".
Now the only Sylvester putting out music during the 70's and 80's was a flamboyant disco and soul singer named Sylvester James, and it seemed unlikely that he would be the source of the sample. Just to be sure, though, I checked with the man running his online fan club, who told me that Sylvester James never put out a version of Bumpy's Lament.
A couple of years after hearing Drugs, I finally got around to seeing Shaft for the first time, at which point I recognized the now familiar opening notes to Bumpy's Lament as part of the movie's soundtrack. The score for the film was produced by Isaac Hayes, which included this version of the song:
Isaac Hayes - Bumpy's Lament (youtube link)
The notes being played were certainly similar to the sample from Drugs, but it was clear that this wasn't the same version that was used by Fabian Muzik. Having run into a dead end, I contacted Fabian to see if he could shed some light on the whole issue. I'm not sure if he thought I was trying to collect royalties from him, or if he was just unwilling to give up the name of his source on principle, but either way he was unwilling to part with the information.
Finally, I hit up my man Scholar over at Souled On Music, and as it turned out he, too, had been trying to track down the sample. This is what he had to say:
"The only two versions of Bumpy's Lament I can think of are the ones by Isaac Hayes and Soul Mann and The Brothers. Almost every time that Bumpy's Lament gets sampled, people automatically assume it's the Hayes version, but a lot of producers have dug out the Soul Mann version as well. Soul Mann was actually Sy Mann, but I can't find any reference indicating that his real name was Sylvester either."
Scholar passed along a vinyl rip of Soul Mann's version of the song:
Soul Mann (aka Sy Mann) - Bumpies Lament
Though it seems unlikely that I'll ever get a definitive answer that Soul Mann's version is, indeed, the source, I have very little doubt that this is the record that Fabian used for Drugs. The Sy Mann version, which you'll notice is spelled slightly different from the original Isaac Hayes song, comes from a rather curious album that he put out with his group Soul Mann and the Brothers, Shaft!. Sy Mann's album was a remake (or perhaps more accurately, a full beatjacking) of the original Shaft soundtrack that Isaac Hayes produced. Discogs lists Isaac Hayes as the producer of the Sy Mann version as well, but nothing else that I've turned up suggests that Hayes had anything to do with it. Sy Mann's online biography describes the album thusly:
"Mann's name also shows up on another great Pickwick product [Sy Mann's record label], its rip-off of the soundtrack to "Shaft!"--credited in this case to "Soul Mann and the Brothers"--which, in true Pickwick fashion, contains two covers of the originals and the remainder of sound-alike filler tracks, probably all composed and arranged by Mann. "
The best guess I have at this point is that whoever originally typed up the liner notes for Lil Kim's album must have been looking the record up in a catalog of samples and accidentally typed it in as Sylvester instead of Sy Mann (which would, presumably, come directly after "Sylvester, James" in an alphabetical listing).
And to wrap this whole thing up, here's the actual instrumental from Drugs:
Lil' Kim - Drugs (Instrumental)
Shout out to Scholar for providing some of the background information on Soul Mann, as well as hooking us up with a vinyl rip of the track itself. In addition to being one of the most genuine cats you'll ever talk to, his "Souled On Samples" series over at Souled On Music is required reading for any fan of hip hop.
6/9/2007 07:10:01 PM posted by Fresh