Archive for December 25th, 2006

I got this from a post on Okayplayer, and I thought that it was probably the most appropriate way to start my however-long commemoration of The Kang.  So with no further ado…

1. Best Use Of “Funky Drummer”: I wanna say Rebel Without A Pause, but…Mama Said Knock You Out is very close.
2. Best NON “IT TAKES TWO” use of “Think”: Golddigger - EPMD.  The little “She bad, Hank” sets off the action just right.
3. Best Use Of “Funky President (People Its Bad)“: Eric B For President
4. Best James Offspring Production Use In Hip Hop: “Four Play” - Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns in Packet Man - Digital Underground
5. Best St Clair Squeal PE - Rebel Without a Pause.  No. Question.
6. Best Non PE St. Clair Squeal- ??
7. Best James in RnB - Hold On - En Vogue
8. Best James in Pop - I don’t know pop that well.
9. Best Use of his Vocals - Golddigger - EPMD
10.Best “holy shit THAT was JAMES BROWN?” - There Was A Time - Dee Felice Trio.  There Was A Time is a James Brown staple, and I thought I had heard it every way there was to hear it, but I was stone-cold wrong.  You know that sample from Chubb Rock’s Treat ‘Em Right?  That bass line?  It’s from here.
11. Best JB Album Cover - Black Caesar is pretty hot.
12. Best Haterade James -
13. No JAMES NOOOOOOO!!!!!: The rapping on For Goodness Sakes, Look At Those Cakes.  Sheesh.
14. Best JB just hanging with the boy’s banter on wax: “We gotta go on a Jesus crusade like the rest of ‘em…” from More Peas.  But More Peas is just a gold mine of banter in general.
15. Best JB Drummer:  Gotta give the nod to Stubblefield, although Starks always represented, and Melvin Parker plays on my all-time favorite James song.
16. Best JB Label
17. Irony In The Fire
18. Tell the truth…Eddie Murphy started your interest in JB: Yes or No:  Naw, what really got me into JB was hip-hop.  Started tryin to source all those samples I loved.  That put me on the quest I’ve been on ever since.
19. The Best James On TV to school a youngin:  This clip of JB doing Sex Machine and Soul Power.  Note the extremely tall bassist in the background.
20. The Funkiest Moment captured on wax:  So many to choose from, but Let A Man Come In And Do the Popcorn is, to me, the absolute essence of everything James Brown was about.

I wake up on Christmas morning to find out that James Brown has died. He was getting up there, so I knew it would happen eventually, but I wasn’t expecting it now. That’s not the way to digest my Christmas bacon.

It’s doubtless that there will be literally hundreds of obituaries detailing everything he did over the course of his illustrious career, and there’s probably not much I have to add to that. Not in the traditional sense, at least. Sooner than later, I’ll try to break it down scientifically and provide some context for the playlists that you KNOW are coming. But for now, just suffice it to say I’m missing the legend already.

On a lighter but related note, does this mean Al Sharpton is going to cut his hair?