It might be 30 years since the first hiphop records appeared but KoolHerc was firing up crowds in the Bronx with rock and funk breakdowns several years earlier, inspiring others to start the hiphop revolution. During the 80s this appropriation mutated into audacious sampling, source tunes appearing on illegal compilations like Paul Winley’s Super Disco Breaks series before the licensed sets of the following decade. Here, Ace’s Dean Rudland digs deeper, casting back to hiphop’s gestation with a stellar set of the tunes which gave DJs their ammunition [while throwing in spot-on notes]. Not just the Herc-Bam-Flash axis either, this immaculately-selected barrage of seminal bliss also encompasses what other Bronx Djs like Charlie Chase and Grand Wizard Theodore were playing too. The essentially funk-dominated set mixes the familiar [James Brown, the JBs’ ‘Blow Your Head’, ‘Apache’ by the Incredible Bongo Band] with more obscure sides which required tracking down even then [Captain Sky’s epic ‘Super Sperm’, ‘Scratchin” by the Magic Disco Machine], plus seminal cut-fodder like Thin Lizzy’s ‘Johnny The Fox’ and the Monkees’ ‘Mary, Mary’. Eye-openers including Freedom’s ‘Get Up And Dance’ [lifted wholesale by Grandmaster Flash for ‘Freedom’] and Earth, Wind and Fire’s ‘Africano’ [spot the I’m A Celebrity theme timbales!], while Shirley Ellis’ ‘The Clapping Song’ represents the pre-rap street slang known as the dozens. For the long-term hiphop fanatic this marvellous set of seminal building blocks reminds how trail-blazing and electrifying the music was in its formative first decade before being sanitised and endlessly recycled into the contrived, vapid dreck which goes under that banner today.
5 Out Of 5
Reviewed By: Kris Needs
