Peter Scholtes in City Pages: PE, Prince, Mpls hip-hop

Clearing out some more of the weekly e-mail newsletters that fill up my inbox. Figured this link was appropriate to post, since we've had a running conversation about the historical significance and continuing relevance of PE and Chuck D:

Welcome to the Superdome
How Hurricane Katrina made Public Enemy relevant again
by Peter S. Scholtes
November 2, 2005

It was news to me that PE dropped a track titled "Hell No We Ain't All Right!" via shutemdown.com amid the Katrina aftermath.

That transitions into a review of two PE discs thave have just dropped: Power to the People and the Beats: Public Enemy's Greatest Hits and New Whirl Odor.

BTW, Scholtes seems to know what's he's talking about. I've come across two of his CP features from the summer of 2004 that were just mind-blowing:

One Nation, Invisible
The untold story of local hip-hop: 1981 to 1996
by Peter S. Scholtes
August 18, 2004

Who knew there was any story of Twin Cities hip hop from '81-'96??

And then there was this, which tells a story where you know the players, but their prehistory is amazing:

School of Funk
Jimmy Jam was a DJ. Morris Day was a drummer. Prince was a kid with a huge afro. Before they changed popular music, Mom told them to turn
that racket down.
by Peter S. Scholtes
July 14, 2004

That feature goes a large part of the way towards explaining something I've always wondered about: how did a genius of black music like Prince manage come out of Minneapolis, of all places?

last.fm - making the connection

Been listening to radio streams via last.fm every now and then at work. Just now, it served up James Brown's "The Boss", which is apparently on the "Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" soundtrack.

Something about the horn and guitar on the track sounded famililar. Took me a second to place it: it's the basis for smoking beat behind Nas's "Get Down."

This bit of sample-spotting reminded me to suggest we resurrect a project me and Juniorcooper discussed but never got going--spotting lyrical allusions.

Following the GFoS in the radio stream: "Better Things" off of Massive Attack's classic Protection.

my new favorite track of the moment...

T-Pain, "I'm Sprung"--check the video here.

Made an impulse purchase of the track from the iTMS last night. Got it in heavy rotation this morning here at work.

Those deep south beats plus the Roger Troutman-style vocoder got me...sprung.

Now I just got to track down the Bay Area Remix--"Go Dumb"--which is in seriously heavy rotation on the radio up here.

happy b-day to juniorcooper

I'd been planning to put together a mix CD for the man's birthday, but not surprisingly it hasn't happened yet. At least I got a good excuse this time, what with all the chaos Anj and I have been dealing with over the last few weeks. In fact, I haven't even had my laptop through most of it--left it at the spot while we evacuated to the Fisherman's Wharf hotel that first weekend, and Anj took it with her to Berkeley this week--b/c her Powerbook's hard drive died the same week all this went down at our place! When it rains, it pours, and it just came down hard.

So I'll put something together this coming week/end. I figure I'll offer it up to the dillytaunt team, as a general commemoration of the date. Look for a tracklisting up here next week.