Tracks of the Week: Latifah, Monie and Ultimatum’s Remix Magic

Queen Latifah’s release of All Hail the Queen in 1989 was catnip to critics and the beginning of a veeeery good run for Dana Elaine Owens that arced from albums to the screen.

The tracks I return to most are both remixes of tracks on that album — and are both touchpoints for how hip hop and electronic acts from the U.S. and UK breathed one another in.

The first is The Crazy Extended 45 King Remix of the album’s most well-known song, “Ladies First.” Obvious UK tie-in here. Guest rapper Monie Love showed up and blew the doors off:

DJ Mark the 45 King (RIP) is the production name I most associate with this album, but Prince Paul, Daddy-0, KRS-ONE and Louie Vega also contributed to this breakout.

My second never-skip off this album is the Ultimatum remix of “Dance for Me,” which also has UK DNA in it. It also had more juice, mood and adrenaline than the LP version.

Ultimatum was a specialist remix outfit composed of the Stereo MCs camp — yes, fellow Americans, the outfit that had a big hit over here with “Connected” in 1992 — and DJ Cesare, who is listed as the Ultimatum remix point man and sometimes as a member of Stereo MCs. He had his beats and scratches in all kinds of projects and groups, from the KLF to Psychic TV.

It’s only fitting that where the US touches the UK touches hip hop touches dance music, you get a rich font of sample sources. If WhoSampled is to be believed, you’re getting pieces of James Brown and a Sly and the Family Stone medley track smoothly Frankensteined to a 1986 track from The The and bits of drums from post-punk legends Magazine.

You can’t deny how they put it all together over Latifah’s bright exhortations to get on the dance floor:

Some of my favorite co-minglings of hip hop and electronic sensibility right there, especially the urgency of the drum break. 

What fun. I’m just gonna play some more of it while you add this to your playlist. My work here is done for today.

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Check out 50 Golden Era Hip Hop Deep Cuts You Must Experience

Track of the Week Extended Remix: Tim’s Whole List of Hip Hop Suggestions

In Episode 112 I talked with my UK pal Tim Sismey about a track he recommended, which I loved: “Cordless Mics at 20 Paces” by DJ Skitz feat. Phi-Life Cypher.

This was occasion for him to spend time digging through a pile of things he hadn’t thought about or played for a long time.

Here’s Tim chatting about the UK scene and his adolescent path to hip hop addiction:

How Tim Got Converted to Hip Hop

In the course of digging through tracks, he came up with a whole raft of gems that we couldn’t squeeze into the Track of the Week segment.

They fit here. Mucho gusto.

Collapsed Lung ‎– Down With The Plaid Fad (XXLarge)

Blackalicious - Rhymes for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind

Killah Priest - Moanin' (Ft. Killa Sin)

Youngblood Brass Band - Avalanche

Company Flow - The Fire In Which You Burn

Grand Agent - Every Five Minutes

Vast Aire feat. Diverse - Big Game

C-Rayz Walz - Buck 80

Prefuse 73 feat. MF DOOM & Aesop Rock - Black List

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Check out 50 Golden Era Hip Hop Deep Cuts You Must Experience

Three Boom-Bap Big-Crew Bangers You Might Not Have Heard Yet

One of the ways I defend myself from automated spectacles and simulation is digging back to artifacts I know I can trust. 

One blessing about being a Gen Xer? I got to live half my life in the pre-internet era. I’ve got the frame of reference that helps me find and remember real-deal media, confident that the vibration I’m getting, even via YouTube ,came from human vocal chords and real people in a real neighborhood that jangled and whomped in a real place in time.

Nothing whomped better than that big-crew phase of boom bap that hit its peak around 1993-94. Think Leaders of the New School. Onyx. Fu-Schickens. Think massive snare hits yoked to a jazz bass sample and a chaser of echoing horns. 

I thought I’d mapped all the major and minor points of the this microera when I picked my way past the most obvious plays and started adding tracks by outfits like Rumpletilskinz and Yaggfu Front.

I was just scratching the surface. Here for a jolt of authentic energy is a crew called Now Born Click, whose cassette EP goes for a lot of money on Discogs; I don’t think they hung around long enough to make an album.

Lace your Timbs up for this one:

Here’s another stomper for you: “Trouble Wreck” by the Troubleneck Brothers, all seven of them.

They got this one on rotation on Rap City, where you can see they’re running every part of the template, both in track production and video style, because it looks like they got half the city out for the take where they’re quasi-moshing for the shouted chorus. I still prefer the audio:

So you know Ice T, right? His production and rhyming posse was Rhyme Syndicate.

Somehow, there was a dude from the UK who was loosely affiliated with them named Red Venom.

Anyway, here’s a crew called Freakin Inglish from Salford & Manchester getting in on the act. I think they understood the assignment:

It takes a human guide to get to the best, I think still. Because while imaginationless AI hyperscalers ruin the future, they’re making unwelcome raids on memory, too.

Now I have to be careful when hunting down an old audiobook because they’re scraping my favorite novels and reading those with robots and doing cultural retrospectives whose scripts stink of LLM phraseology.

You’re better off trusting people for the good stuff.

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Check out 50 Golden Era Hip Hop Deep Cuts You Must Experience