If you know anything about hip-hop, have ever seen Do The Right Thing, are remotely interested in copyright law, and you were somewhere in the Midwest, you needed to be at this panel. Basically, the discussion that was advertised as a retrospective on Nation Of Millions, took a turn into sampling legality, and the history of one of the most influential crews of our time.
Most of the convo was piloted by Hank & Chuck; both romancing about meeting in the early 70’s, the Spectrum DJ team, and a simpler time when Flavor Flav was affectionately called Rico (please note, Flav’s government name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr). Keith added info on how DJ’s record pools worked and we all learned how much of a bitch it is to release a timely record while on a Major Label. One of the most interesting aspects of the DJ pools is how manual beat matching and deep knowledge of bpm’s & song structures helped grow the music. Additionally the hustle to put out “Rebel without A Pause” in response to “I Know You Got Soul” by Rakim helped put Hip-Hop’s evolution into an even more respectable perspective. Don’t sleep- it’s all worth looking into.
Harry Allen provided the balancing component as one of the smartest yet seldom spoken heads at the table-which is sayin a lot, because they are all geniuses- and even added a nugget that is worth discussion for another pos; hip-hop’s connection intrinsically to punk rock. This came from Allen’s reading of a piece he wrote back in the day, which quotes Hank Shocklee posing the question “who said musicians are the only ones who can make music?” Think on that.
It’s just like PE to make us still scratch our temple.
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