When I first started this endeavour back in 2021 the aim was to listen to more of the records in my collection. I’ve amassed a few thousand over the years, but for too long the majority of them sat in various rooms around the house, neglected and unplayed. The writing aspect of it has been a pleasant side-benefit, and whilst it has become the main focus, particularly in this latest incarnation of the project, I’m still driven by the desire to discover more records.
This week I’ve listened to a lot of music, but until today it basically focussed on just one record. I think I’ve played Saint Etienne’s So Tough five times this week, revelling in minor details, the overall shape of it and rediscovering just how much it means to me. As mentioned in my post below this was augmented by Wrongtom’s excellent dissection of the record on twitter, which took me into a few different corners of the internet, most notably listening to 4 different cover versions of Teenage Fanclub’s ‘Everything Flows’ on Thursday (Saint Etienne’s is probably best, closely followed by the Afghan Whigs).
The funny thing is that this record wasn’t a huge one for me at the time, but over the years it has resonated in ways I couldn’t have expected. I was 15 in 1993, which I think was the year I really started to get into music, devouring the NME, Melody Maker and Select, taping the Evening Session on Radio One and making my first forays into gig-going (U2 at Wembley and Shed Seven supported by The Bluetones and Supergrass). I was surprised to see that So Tough didn’t make NME’s Top 50 albums of the year, although there were plenty of others on the list that I still listen to today. Bjork’s Debut took the number one spot, alongside The Boo Radleys’ Giant Steps, Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish and debut albums from Suede, Rage Against The Machine and Belly. Checking Melody Maker’s list from the same year added records by Tindersticks, Afghan Whigs, Dinosaur Jr, Aphex Twin, PJ Harvey and One Dove, all of which still get regular spins from me.
It was a hell of a year musically, and this is before we get to the hip hop records that have since become very important for me - Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers, Midnight Maurauders, Return Of The Boom Bap and Buhloone Mindstate to name just a few. I’d never really thought of 1993 as a pivotal year in my personal musical world, but apparently it is; so many of the things I love now can be traced back to a seemingly non-descript part of the 90s: grunge was on the way out, britpop hadn’t yet taken over whilst hip hop was in a golden age, although I didn’t know it at the time.
Of course this will be different for everyone, although I’d imagine for most of us, it would be a point at some time in our teenage years where we’d find our own personal year zero. I’d recommend giving it a go - and I’d be interested to hear the formative eras and albums of your lives too.
February 21st • Dilated Peoples - The Platform
A couple of weeks back I was lucky enough to warm up for The Alchemist at The Jazz Cafe. DJing before hip hop acts is something I used to do a lot back in the day, and I was reminded about the preparation needed for these kind of shows. There are rules, ranging from the obvious (don't play any of the headliner's tunes) to the more niche (don't play anything from an artist who has beef with the headliners).
This time around there was a further quirk due to Alchemist's insanely weighty discography. I'll freely admit that I was googling tunes in the club to make sure I wasn't going to accidentally play something he'd worked on. Few producers can still be making music almost 30 years after they first came up, let alone retain relevance and demand. The production roll call is pretty nuts:: Mobb Deep, Pharoah Monch, Jadakiss, Nas, Snoop, Roc Marciano, Kendrick, Westside Gunn and Earl Sweatshirt have all been blessed with an Alchemist beat. In truth he probably deserves more respect than he gets.
Looking back at his work it reminded me of the first time I became aware of him, which was via this 2000 underground rap debut from Dilated Peoples. He contributes 5 of the 16 tracks on the record, including the iconic title track, which I was pleased to hear him drop in his set.
This came out the year that I started putting on parties in Leeds and listening to it now skips me back a couple of decades in a heartbeat. It's simple music really:; gritty beats, grittier rhymes and Babu's ubiquitous cuts make for a killer combination. Alchemist's tracks are probably the standouts, but it was nice to be reminded of the likes of Joey Chavez and the ABB crew that Dilated emerged from.
It also puts me in mind of the pre-soundcloud mixtape era, when DJs would record mixes of their latest favourites on a regular basis to get gigs and share recent discoveries. There were rules to this too - normally involving a clever beat juggle right at the start and a long scratch track at the end of side one - fresssssh! That's undoubtedly where I'd have discovered Dilated, People Under The Stairs, Defari and the rest, and it's a time I have a lot of affection for.
February 24th • Saint Etienne - So Tough
I've written about my love for Saint Etienne before, and this week was inspired to revisit this, their second LP, on the 30th anniversary of it's release. First up I need to shout out Wrongtom who broke down the samples, inspirations and his love for the record in one of his ever-excellent twitter threads. Go seek it out right now if you haven't already.
Tom found this record as the crossover point from a childhood defined by hip hop, soul, reggae and electro. This was part of his gateway into guitar music, whereas for me it came the other way around. Like Tom I was a big pop music fan but as I discovered my own taste beyond Top Of The Pops, it was guitar music that I was drawn to. Records like this one, Morning Dove White, Screamadelica and Blue Lines as well as the XL Recordings comps were part of the process of opening my mind up to dance music, hip hop, soul and the rest, culminating in The Beastie Boys' Ill Communication in 94.
Like The Beastie Boys, Saint Etienne use samples (sometimes the same ones) to create a patchwork collage, wearing their influences as a badge of honour. Whereas Ad-Rock, Mike D and MCA brought you into their world of skating, weed smoking and teenage punk rock, Bob, Pete and Sarah filtered everything through the prism of London. This presents itself in every inch of this record; in the lyrics, the film dialogue clips and of course the sound. Whether its swinging 60s pop or towering 80s dub this record could only be made by someone who loves the city to their bones. Living here, particularly on the outskirts, means that you are exposed to so many different cultures and ideas - and this record captures that alchemy better than most.
It puts me in mind of another record from that year, Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish. I love that record too, and I remember how it was acclaimed for capturing a particular sense of Englishness. In hindsight those accolades should be given to Saint Etienne; they captured an Englishness that was as comfortable with Weatherall and Shut Up and Dance as it was with Billy Liar and Kentish Town Cafes. What a band, and what a record.
*If you’re wondering, the title of today’s post comes from a lyric in album opener Mario’s Cafe which I discovered (via Wrongtom of course) wasn’t actually the cafe they met in every Tuesday. That was called Moonlight Cafe, but they thought that sounded like a Chris de Burgh track title, so switched it to Mario’s instead.
February 26th • Lil Yachty - Let’s Start Here
This summer hip hop turns 50. It's an interesting time for the genre as it enters comfortable middle age; where the term old skool can refer to anywhere between 1980 and 2000 depending on your perspective. I'm not as up on current rap music as I used to be; it's almost a decade since I was regularly playing hip hop clubs, and I remember the point at which I decided some of it wasn't for me.
Playing at our regular monthly night at Marketplace with kidkanevil I got fed up of being asked for Fuckin' Problems by A$AP Rocky. I hated the track, it wasn't my vibe and I didn't want to have to play it. Over a few months I realised that the problem here wasn't the taste of the clientele - the 'problem' was me. That seam of rap music wasn't my bag, but a lot of people did like it, so it was probably best that I got out of their way and let someone else more enthusiastic step into the booth.
Watching the generational shifts in hip hop from a slightly removed position over the last few years has been interesting. Even an upstart, anti-establishment genre can become conservative over time, and the po-faced guardians of the culture are quick to declare anything they don't like as 'not real hip hop'. This is a fate that has befallen Lil Yachty it seems, not that I'd know; until last month I was only dimly aware of him. I caught up with a friend I'd not seen for almost a year in January, and the first thing he said to me, and I mean, the first thing, was 'the new Lil Yachty record is fucking incredible.'
That bold statement turned out to not be hyperbole. It has been billed as Yachty's desire for credibility outside of the mumble-rap scene that he came up in. Coming to it as a relative newcomer to that sound I can't really speak to how much it repositions him, but I can say that it's a very good record, blending auto-tuned vocals with psych-rock and lounge-funk. I love it and I suggest anyone coming to it leave their preconceptions at the door and just enjoy it as music. It's a great reminder that genre is a limitation that can sometimes get in the way of a good time. For Yachty, if this indeed just the start, I can't wait to see what he does next.
Ah the early 90s, what a time, eh. All those artists you mentioned helped shape the sound of the 90s, and I bet that anyone that was a teenager during that era and started to really discover music that appealed to them, not just what was popular, feels that way. I started my radio career in ‘93 when I was a wee little 16 year old. My mother wasn’t too pleased to find out that I was spending all my free time at the this commercial pop station called Power FM in Istanbul and not studying to get in to an Ivy League college like all my classmates were doing. Though she recently told me that since I’m still on the radio three decades later she’s proud of my commitment and that I stuck with someone for so long, and who doesn’t like approval a parent, right 😉