There’s no other way for Pete Rock to have arrived at his sound, not even if he had hired Tom Scott to come in and play his sax riff live in the studio. “T.R.O.Y.” is a perfect example of why sampling is so valuable. I’ve debated the musical merits of sampling endlessly with my friends and students, musicians and non-musicians alike. The chain of ideas from Jefferson Airplane to Tom Scott to Pete Rock and CL Smooth reminds me very much of the chain from Paul Simon to Bob James to Run-DMC that culminates in “ Peter Piper.” It seems like a recipe for success: golden-age hip-hop group samples jazz fusion cover of sixties pop-rock song. He also wrote the theme songs for Starsky & Hutch, Hill Street Blues and Family Ties.Īnd here’s the original Jefferson Airplane song at the head of this memetic family tree: He’s best known to hippies for playing sax and lyricon on Terrapin Station by the Grateful Dead and has been a session guy on a zillion other albums. Slick Rick used it a year earlier it on “ It’s A Boy.” Hip-hop loves Tom Scott generally–many tracks sample the beat from “ Sneakin’ In The Back.” I had never heard of Tom Scott before writing this post, but I turn out to have heard a lot of his work. Pete Rock wasn’t the first hip-hop producer to have noticed this riff. The Tom Scott record in question is his rendition of “ Today” by Jefferson Airplane. When I mixed the song down, I had Charlie Brown from Leaders of the New School in the session with me, and we all just started crying. Next thing you know, I have a beautiful beat made. I found some other sounds and then heard some sax in there and used that. It had such a beautiful bassline, and I started with that first. When I found the record by Tom Scott, basically I just heard something incredible that touched me and made me cry.
And to this day, I can’t believe I made it through, the way I was feeling. Case closed.I had a friend of mine that passed away, and it was a shock to the community. So heres the math: one classic hip-hop group, two memorable singles, one killer 7-Inch. Older artists thought that us younger cats were ripping them off, but it wasnt like that. So it was just something that needed to be straightened out. They didnt seem to care about how their music affected anyone else, they just wanted money. Again over a mid-tempo groove, and again with Petes trademark warm horn samples, CL explained in Check the Technique, On the song, I was talking about sampling, and I was basically reacting to how everything was such a procedure when you had to clear stuff. Straighten It Out, although not the runaway smash that They Reminisce was, is equally emotional and soulful. His status as a storytelling MC remains underrated, but here it remains proudly on display. Grooving very deeply over a filtered bassline and a now-ingrained Tom Scott saxophone riff (Today), CL Smooth lives up to his moniker, weaving various tales and lessons about family and friends. They Reminisce Over You – a tribute to their late friend Trouble T-Roy (a member of Heavy Ds crew) – is one of the most beloved hip-hop tracks of the 90s, and rightfully so. Originally, both were their own 12-inch singles, but for this special, first-time-ever 7-Inch release, they are paired together. These two songs are taken from the groups legendary first full-length from 1992, Mecca & The Soul Brother.
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