Classic Hip Hop Sample Chasing: Death in Vegas Back to Roxanne Shanté
I still return to Death in Vegas’ 1997 LP, Dead Elvis. The album’s kind of a sketchbook of electronic styles of the time, like they were playing around (at a high level of execution), sipping from all the styles of the era.
Because of what I was into at the time, I got the CD so I could play a track called “Dirt” to death:
I still love Dirt’s splicing of contemporary techno effects and rhythm to the driving, spacy, and dirty psychedelic music festival vibe.
One of the layering passages that makes it go, and which kept it in rotation in my apartment, was the simple classic addition of a repeated hip hop vocal sample. Capping a build this way is always a nice trick for getting that balance of necessary repetition and perceived forward motion. It’s still an extra little thrill for me when it builds up to the sample.
As the years went past, I started spending more time with the rest of the album, absorbing what they were up to here without just seeking the big-beat high of “Dirt.”
If you like electronic music of the ‘90s generally, take a trip through this one. It has a wide range of textures, styles, and moods. Its lack of focus is its strength. During these repeat visits, the track “Rekkit” became my favorite. It’s absolutely beautiful, especially the shift to the driving bass-first melody of the chorus:
During these same years, I was also reeducating myself on hip hop by following YouTube Music’s suggestions to some interesting cul-de-sacs. And I shouted one morning when I placed it. That vocal sample was Roxanne Shanté from her track “Big Mama”!
“Big Mama” was the third track on The Bitch is Back, listed as her second and last album in 1992. Nowadays, she’s properly revered as a First Lady of Hip Hop who was at the epicenter of NYC’s pivotal moments.
Netflix even did a biopic about her a few years back and everybody acknowledges the years when, only 14, she connected with upcoming production legend Marley Marl, who also lived in the Queensbridge housing projects, and became a member of what would be the Juice Crew.
The Roxanne Wars that started with her response (“Roxanne’s Revenge”) to a UTFO track set off hip hop’s first large-scale diss track frenzy. More comedic and mild than the bloodsport that marked the next two decades, but still a phenomenon. Even crews that had nothing to do with it were pumping out Roxanne response records.
She also figured prominently in the Bridge Wars when the Juice Crew got sideways with the Bronx, whose war shaman was a young KRS-ONE. Roxanne went right at him.
But all that was in the mid/late ‘80s. This was 1992, and “Big Mama” feels like Shante’s already fighting for recognition here. So she goes down swinging by going after other female rappers en masse after opening with her credentials.
In the first verse she’s leaning hard on that ‘80s resume. Then she turns her attention to Queen Latifah and Monie Love, who had a huge breakout with their “Ladies First” collaboration. Shanté shits all over that.
MC Lyte was next in the line of fire, showing that in stuff made on the streets for the streets, homophobic attacks were fair game with women combatants, too.
And just to round things out geographically, she pivots finally to Yo-Yo, the female member of Ice Cube’s Lench Mob, calling her an overweight slut,. This verse is when you get the line that Death in Vegas sampled:
I never traced what, if anything, the fallout from this record was. But it has yielded the secret word for the indie game giveaway I’m doing, which is: QUEENSBRIDGE. Put that word in the subject line of an email and send it chief [dot] rocka [at] BreakupGamingSociety.com.
If you want to talk board games or hip hop in the body of the email, we can do that, but that subject line is your entry to win all the indie games I talked about in Episode 110.