Please people.... This happens almost every other thread...
These were voted for most relevant to SS discussions... NOT best albums of all time.
We will not stop.
When you get to the top ten people will be signing up just for a chance to tell you how wrong you are.
James wrote a good piece about this.
The point being, as record collectors all we care about is minutia.
So don't be surprised when some record collector starts nitpicking. It is in our dna.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Yeah, in none of my comments am I saying that albums such as The Infamous, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, or even Brainfreeze don't belong here. I'm just trying to discuss potential shortcomings in light of all the praise.
And no Burns, had 10-foot-tall aliens done Brainfreeze, I still woulda shelved it with the quickness.
If you were digging at the time this dropped, it made an impression.
Except when it didn't.
Something I also never got was dudes bending over backwards trying to land their own copies of records from the Brainfreeze mix. You nab them and then you spin them out...and ultimately you are just copying some other deejays.
I do like the idea that Brainfreeze made dudes dig even deeper for their own discoveries. But in reality, that damn mix inspired far too much aping and positioning for my taste.
And yes, I'll go as far as saying that if 2 black dudes made Brainfreeze, it wouldn't have taken off the way it did.
A mix is a mix and therein lies it's beauty: It's should sound like stream of consciousness if it's good. Shadow and Cut Chemist made a good mix. It gave you a window into what made two of the biggest heads in the game tick . At that time they had both been around for a minute and peeps were wondering where they were at. It was cool to hear how they worked together, and it made an impression. It did not influence my digging habits: I had been at it for ~5 yrs then and was on a different tack. I never got too excited about funk 45's but I do get excited about them dropping dopenes like "T plays it cool". Now something like Chairman Mao and Citizen Kane....... As for digging for other peoples spins, shhheeeeeeeeeiitt son , where ya been. We're just a circle of fish eating each others tales. Nothing better then getting together with a hommie or two a trying to school each other.
flashback to the soulman interview with fusion from bloodtamore in bigdaddy mag.
fusion played the race card on this mix and said if 2 blacks guys did it etc etc???.
still haven't heard fusion's answer to brainfreeze
Great mix. I remember seeing Shadow/Cut Chemist in Philly and they were going to do the Brainfreeze set, but somebody stole their records at the airport. That sucked.
Ha, this is like one of those games of Telephone. That's not what happened. I wrote about this for the LA Weekly back in the day and it is a great story. HEre's the cut n paste version:
Cut and Shadow decided to take *Brainfreeze* on the road for half-a-dozen select dates across the West Coast, plus a New York show (???The Last Dance??? marks the end of this limited tour). After a show in Portland, Cut had *all* his 45s stolen though neither he nor Shadow realized the theft until they reached the next leg of the tour in New York. Cut immediately took off to find Shadow, running over a dozen blocks through midtown Manhattan. ???Ten blocks up, I???m running up Manhattan, somebody stops me and asks, ???are you Cut Chemist??????? Cut increduously remembers, apologizing to his would-be fan that now was perhaps *not* the best time to chat.
Eventually, the two DJs donned their sleuth caps and traced the theft back to someone inside the Portland venue. Numerous phone calls brought back a wave of confusing, contradictory statements, a healthy dose of straight deception and many failed promises. Cut and his manager didn???t spare any effort in putting pressure on the parties involved. ???We were really just playing tough guy and this kid wasn???t going to get away with it, whoever he was,??? shares Cut, stating, ???they only had choice, which was either to give it back or have their name dragged through the mud forever.??? When booking agents, sympathetic to Cut???s plight, started to take shows away from the venue, the guilty parties cracked and sent back *all* of Cut???s missing 45s, without a single one gone or damaged.
Despite the intial trauma of the theft, Cut remains karmically wistful about the experience - he even plans to make a mixtape out of the whole ordeal. ???I???m going to make a tape about it, called The Great Crate Caper,??? laughs Cut, noting, ???In trying to find out details [of the theft], I asked if I could record people. I???ve got all this recorded footage of me breathing down people???s necks, me and my manager playing good cop/bad cop routines with people. Class A footage.???
And yes, I'll go as far as saying that if 2 black dudes made Brainfreeze, it wouldn't have taken off the way it did.
We have this thread somewhere don't we?
I don't think anyone started digging for just Brainfreeze 45s.
You would have to already be a digger to care. If you are a digger you are not going to pass up AAWB just because it is not on Brainfreeze.
I'd agree with Harvey's argument to the degree that you needed at least one of the two in that pair to take part. I think you could have had, say, DJ Shadow and J-Rocc make BF and it would have taken off. Or maybe Cut Chemist and Cash Money. But in 1999, Shadow + Cut had a ton of factors going for them in helping make BF a much bigger deal than if, say ,J-Rocc and Jazzy Jeff had made the same mix. Maybe.
Whiteness isn't incidental of course: I don't think it's controversial to suggest that both Shadow and Cut benefitted from being highly talented DJs who also were white guys and whose fan base was largely white. All that mattered a great deal.
After all, a few years before, DJ Q-Bert had made a mixtape based around UBB songs and that didn't draw anywhere near the same attention despite, conceptually, being similar. But Q never had Shadow or Cut's mainstream/underground balance of fame.
None of this, to me, takes away from the excellence of BF as a mix. But it was a mix by the right two guys at the right time. Them being white doesn't explain all of the success but it certainly isn't incidental to it either.
I popped in the DVD two days ago and i was surprised at the percentage of stuff that was already used/sampled by other cats.
Yet alot of yall sound like they were presenting you w/ some mostly new shit.
The mix itself works but to talk like they were exposing folks in suspect.
To have joints on 45 is that shit, but calling alot of it "rear" seems latte pas to me.
Yeah, I don't think either of the set out to lace the mix with purely "never heard before" shit. They were clearly "remaking" hip-hop beats at times and they, of all people, would have known how perfectly common a lot of their records were. The mix was about the execution, not the raw materials.
im not trying to wave the brainfreeze flag here, cause i agree with a lot of what Os saying. and there are some common joints on there..and a lot of sampled joints, but putting it on par as qberts ubb mix isnt right either.
i actually relistened to about half of it and i was probably mentally combining brainfreeze with product placement, which my have increased the new heat quotient i remember it having
Sure, but it wasn't ALL about that. There are mixes that are strictly on some flossing-top-dollar tip and BF never seemed to flex like that. You're right - it also wasn't a UBB mix either. But my point is that ultimately, what they were trying to do is figure out how to do a classic 4 turntable mix using funk 45s. I think the performance was the main motivating factor rather than a desire to show off how sick their record collection was.
My earlier point re: Q-Bert's UBB mix is simply that the fact that Shadow and Cut made this mix matters to how it was received, given each man's respective stature and visibility at that particular time. If BF had been made by, say Rhettmatic and Numark, it wouldn't have gotten the reception it did.
And yes, I'll go as far as saying that if 2 black dudes made Brainfreeze, it wouldn't have taken off the way it did.
We have this thread somewhere don't we?
I don't think anyone started digging for just Brainfreeze 45s.
You would have to already be a digger to care. If you are a digger you are not going to pass up AAWB just because it is not on Brainfreeze.
I'd agree with Harvey's argument to the degree that you needed at least one of the two in that pair to take part. I think you could have had, say, DJ Shadow and J-Rocc make BF and it would have taken off. Or maybe Cut Chemist and Cash Money. But in 1999, Shadow + Cut had a ton of factors going for them in helping make BF a much bigger deal than if, say ,J-Rocc and Jazzy Jeff had made the same mix. Maybe.
Whiteness isn't incidental of course: I don't think it's controversial to suggest that both Shadow and Cut benefitted from being highly talented DJs who also were white guys and whose fan base was largely white. All that mattered a great deal.
After all, a few years before, DJ Q-Bert had made a mixtape based around UBB songs and that didn't draw anywhere near the same attention despite, conceptually, being similar. But Q never had Shadow or Cut's mainstream/underground balance of fame.
Shadow & Cut Chemist are both producers who had product with their name on it on the market.
None of the guys you mentioned at the time were (or if they had joints, they were very low key or *behind the scenes* in comparision).
DJs who produce always get more attention.
Producers who DJ not very well still tend to get more bookings than good DJs who don't produce. It's the market, not race imo.
Shadow & Cut Chemist are both producers who had product with their name on it on the market.
None of the guys you mentioned at the time were (or if they had joints, they were very low key or *behind the scenes* in comparision).
DJs who produce always get more attention.
Producers who DJ not very well still tend to get more bookings than good DJs who don't produce. It's the market, not race imo.
My earlier point is that the market favored white DJ/producers like Cut and Shadow in a way that it didn't favor others. They were towards the top of their respective games for that particular era but part of their ability to be at the top of the game was connected back to being white guys in underground scenes (both hip-hop and funk collecting) comprised of mainly white guys.
Just so we're clear: I don't think it's all about race. Hardly. But race mattered.
For me, at the time the Mix was beyond everything just FUN to listen to. I was on the original bill in San Francisco when Brain Freeze debuted, so I could comprehend exactly what they were doing and how fucking difficult it really was to pull off live. But that wasn't what made it great. The selections were immaculate for that time period and relevant. As far a mix's go this was, is, and always will be a game changer. I agree with most all that was said about race and the popularity of the mix. I also remember there being a lot of haters at the time pointing the race card about the popularity of it, and why their own mix's didn't get the same shine. It would make sense to me if the mix simply was just not good, which it was not. I also the think, that at that time if you stepped to Cut Chemist in battle mode, no matter your race, 99% of the haters would have been laid to waste.
I guess race politics are very different each side of the pond. Over here, if they'd been black, spinning *black music* 45s, I think Brainfreeze would've been fetishised more, not less.
Comments
We will not stop.
When you get to the top ten people will be signing up just for a chance to tell you how wrong you are.
James wrote a good piece about this.
The point being, as record collectors all we care about is minutia.
So don't be surprised when some record collector starts nitpicking. It is in our dna.
And no Burns, had 10-foot-tall aliens done Brainfreeze, I still woulda shelved it with the quickness.
A mix is a mix and therein lies it's beauty: It's should sound like stream of consciousness if it's good. Shadow and Cut Chemist made a good mix. It gave you a window into what made two of the biggest heads in the game tick . At that time they had both been around for a minute and peeps were wondering where they were at. It was cool to hear how they worked together, and it made an impression. It did not influence my digging habits: I had been at it for ~5 yrs then and was on a different tack. I never got too excited about funk 45's but I do get excited about them dropping dopenes like "T plays it cool". Now something like Chairman Mao and Citizen Kane....... As for digging for other peoples spins, shhheeeeeeeeeiitt son , where ya been. We're just a circle of fish eating each others tales. Nothing better then getting together with a hommie or two a trying to school each other.
flashback to the soulman interview with fusion from bloodtamore in bigdaddy mag.
fusion played the race card on this mix and said if 2 blacks guys did it etc etc???.
still haven't heard fusion's answer to brainfreeze
sayin'
as if 50% of them joints are easy finds?
salt will never pop up
Ha, this is like one of those games of Telephone. That's not what happened. I wrote about this for the LA Weekly back in the day and it is a great story. HEre's the cut n paste version:
Cut and Shadow decided to take *Brainfreeze* on the road for half-a-dozen select dates across the West Coast, plus a New York show (???The Last Dance??? marks the end of this limited tour). After a show in Portland, Cut had *all* his 45s stolen though neither he nor Shadow realized the theft until they reached the next leg of the tour in New York. Cut immediately took off to find Shadow, running over a dozen blocks through midtown Manhattan. ???Ten blocks up, I???m running up Manhattan, somebody stops me and asks, ???are you Cut Chemist??????? Cut increduously remembers, apologizing to his would-be fan that now was perhaps *not* the best time to chat.
Eventually, the two DJs donned their sleuth caps and traced the theft back to someone inside the Portland venue. Numerous phone calls brought back a wave of confusing, contradictory statements, a healthy dose of straight deception and many failed promises. Cut and his manager didn???t spare any effort in putting pressure on the parties involved. ???We were really just playing tough guy and this kid wasn???t going to get away with it, whoever he was,??? shares Cut, stating, ???they only had choice, which was either to give it back or have their name dragged through the mud forever.??? When booking agents, sympathetic to Cut???s plight, started to take shows away from the venue, the guilty parties cracked and sent back *all* of Cut???s missing 45s, without a single one gone or damaged.
Despite the intial trauma of the theft, Cut remains karmically wistful about the experience - he even plans to make a mixtape out of the whole ordeal. ???I???m going to make a tape about it, called The Great Crate Caper,??? laughs Cut, noting, ???In trying to find out details [of the theft], I asked if I could record people. I???ve got all this recorded footage of me breathing down people???s necks, me and my manager playing good cop/bad cop routines with people. Class A footage.???
Yet alot of yall sound like they were presenting you w/ some mostly new shit.
The mix itself works but to talk like they were exposing folks in suspect.
To have joints on 45 is that shit, but calling alot of it "rear" seems latte pas to me.
I'd agree with Harvey's argument to the degree that you needed at least one of the two in that pair to take part. I think you could have had, say, DJ Shadow and J-Rocc make BF and it would have taken off. Or maybe Cut Chemist and Cash Money. But in 1999, Shadow + Cut had a ton of factors going for them in helping make BF a much bigger deal than if, say ,J-Rocc and Jazzy Jeff had made the same mix. Maybe.
Whiteness isn't incidental of course: I don't think it's controversial to suggest that both Shadow and Cut benefitted from being highly talented DJs who also were white guys and whose fan base was largely white. All that mattered a great deal.
After all, a few years before, DJ Q-Bert had made a mixtape based around UBB songs and that didn't draw anywhere near the same attention despite, conceptually, being similar. But Q never had Shadow or Cut's mainstream/underground balance of fame.
None of this, to me, takes away from the excellence of BF as a mix. But it was a mix by the right two guys at the right time. Them being white doesn't explain all of the success but it certainly isn't incidental to it either.
Yeah, I don't think either of the set out to lace the mix with purely "never heard before" shit. They were clearly "remaking" hip-hop beats at times and they, of all people, would have known how perfectly common a lot of their records were. The mix was about the execution, not the raw materials.
i actually relistened to about half of it and i was probably mentally combining brainfreeze with product placement, which my have increased the new heat quotient i remember it having
still fun to listen to
Sure, but it wasn't ALL about that. There are mixes that are strictly on some flossing-top-dollar tip and BF never seemed to flex like that. You're right - it also wasn't a UBB mix either. But my point is that ultimately, what they were trying to do is figure out how to do a classic 4 turntable mix using funk 45s. I think the performance was the main motivating factor rather than a desire to show off how sick their record collection was.
My earlier point re: Q-Bert's UBB mix is simply that the fact that Shadow and Cut made this mix matters to how it was received, given each man's respective stature and visibility at that particular time. If BF had been made by, say Rhettmatic and Numark, it wouldn't have gotten the reception it did.
Shadow & Cut Chemist are both producers who had product with their name on it on the market.
None of the guys you mentioned at the time were (or if they had joints, they were very low key or *behind the scenes* in comparision).
DJs who produce always get more attention.
Producers who DJ not very well still tend to get more bookings than good DJs who don't produce. It's the market, not race imo.
the Moroder/Organ Donor/Tim & Bill ending to Brainfreeze is awesome
My earlier point is that the market favored white DJ/producers like Cut and Shadow in a way that it didn't favor others. They were towards the top of their respective games for that particular era but part of their ability to be at the top of the game was connected back to being white guys in underground scenes (both hip-hop and funk collecting) comprised of mainly white guys.
Just so we're clear: I don't think it's all about race. Hardly. But race mattered.