10 of the best jungle / hip hop crossovers
Jungle is often called the British hip hop, for fairly obvious cultural reasons. But actual crossovers between jungle and hip hop are rarer than you might imagine and don’t get anywhere near the respect they deserve when they do happen. These are, after all, two of the most important and innovative musical genres of the 1990s. Their interaction really should be cherished. In any case, I rounded up ten of the best jungle / hip hop crossover tracks, in vague chronological order, be they via samples, remixes or collaborations.
To be very clear, I’m talking here about the moments when jungle / drum & bass meets with (largely US) hip hop. I’m NOT talking about the best MC records in jungle, nor the best MCs, nor the best vocal moments. I love a good MC and - at a jungle / drum & bass night - they are absolutely necessary. They are also seriously underrated for what they bring to the music. But this article isn’t about that. (Except at the end, when briefly it is.)
(Also, I tried to make a playlist of these tracks. But the vast majority aren’t on streaming. Like I say: underrated.)
Busta Rhymes - Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check (Origin Unknown Remix)
Mixing jungle with hip hop isn’t easy. But Origin Unknown - aka Andy C and Ant Miles - made it sound so on their effortlessly brilliant remix of Busta Rhymes’ solo single back in 1996. Not only is the original song’s 92 BPM stroll almost exactly the perfect pace to be doubled up into jungle, but the lazy bass and creeping melody that Woo Hah!! borrows from Galt MacDermot’s Space work perfectly with a rattling breakbeat, while Busta’s dance-hall influenced flow spoke to jungle’s Jamaica-via-the-UK roots. Origin Unknown’s remix sounds utterly inevitable, then, one of the most natural meeting points of jungle and hip hop and a great place to get this list off to a jumping, threshing start. We used to hammer this song on cassingle in the summer of 1996.
Dr Octagon - Blue Flowers (Photek Mix)
Another big song for us in summer 1996 was Dr. Octagon’s Blue Flowers, which came accompanied by a remix 12 inch featuring remakes by DJ Hype and Photek. Hype’s jump up remix was probably the more popular of the two versions at the time; but Photek’s was the keeper, an eternal mix of Rupert Parkes’ intricate drum programming - basically a dress rehearsal for his classic 1997 single Ni - Ten - Ichi - Ryu - and Kool Keith’s space oddball vocal. Photek abandons 90% of Dan The Automator’s production, sticking instead with Q-bert’s frantic scratches, making this a very different match up than Origin Unknown and Busta Rhymes. But the mixture is still incredibly potent, albeit in a rather abstract way.
D-Bridge - Tha Kops
As mentioned above, one of the most important factors in the hip hop / jungle crossover is the fact that jungle operates at roughly double the speed of hip hop. As a result, one of the key components of many hip hop / jungle tunes is the hip-hop-speed opening ballooning into the double-time jungle rush. (See DJ Zinc’s Super Sharp Shooter for a classic of the half-time genre.)
D-Bridge’s 1996 track Tha Kops, which samples Lords of the Underground’s 1994 single Tic Toc, is an early examples of this trend, loping in with 90 seconds of low-key menacing 84 BPM skulk before a frantic bass-drum roll takes us into scuttling break and elastic bass line, which eventually transmutes into a vicious Amen tear out.
4 Hero - Loveless (featuring Ursula Rucker)
4 Hero were so far ahead of the curve in the 90s that it was pretty much inevitable they would become one of the first jungle producers to remix a hip hop song, in this case former Geto Boys rapper Scarface’s 1995 single I See A Man Die, which they took apart, in their inimitable fashion, across four dazzling remixes. (That said, Goldie and Rob Playford’s own classic Scarface remixes, of Hand of the Dead Body, were actually released a year before, in 1994, which seems unbelievably early.)
4 Hero’s greatest hip hop / jungle crossover moment, however, was neither hip hop nor jungle, in the strictest sense of the words. Loveless, a 1997 single that later appeared on the group’s 1998 album Two Pages, was a collaboration with Philadelphia spoken word artist Ursula Rucker, in which the duo bounce live strings, double bass and jazzy drums off Rucker’s breathless and very eloquent tale of environmental collapse, creating one of the most moving songs in the drum & bass cannon.
Goldie (feat KRS One) - Digital (Boymerang Remix)
Goldie was - and arguably still is - the poster boy for jungle, a huge star in the UK and beyond who put a face to the nascent genre. It was no surprise, then, that back in 1997 he became the first jungle producer to work with a hip hop legend, when he teamed up with KRS One on Digital, the first single to be taken from Goldie’s insanely ambitious second album Saturnz Return.
Given the pedigree involved, the original track was disappointing, a slightly awkward meeting of minds that doesn’t quite come off. The Boymerang remix addresses this by ratcheting up the filth, volume and franticness into a scowling monster of a collab.
Missy Elliott - Hit 'Em Wit Da Hee (feat. Lil' Kim) (Ganja Kru Remix)
Ganja Kru - DJ Hype, Pascal and DJ Zinc - are perhaps the leading exponents of the cross over between jump up jungle and hip hop. Hype is the best scratch DJ in jungle and once remixed Dr. Octagon (see above), while Zinc’s Fugees Or Not and the Method Man-sampling Super Sharp Shooter are masterclasses in bringing hip hop’s sharp style into jungle.
All of these songs are worth their place on this list. But the group’s undiscovered gem is the Kru’s remix of Missy Elliott’s Hit 'Em Wit Da Hee, which snuck out on one of those multi CD releases in 1998. I’ve always though of the song’s breathtaking half speed to breakbeat lift off as a kind of sequel to Super Sharp Shooter - yes, that good - with Ganja Kru’s production razor sharp and dangerous as it casually lops layers off Missy and Timbaland’s original. Given that Missy and Tim would later experiment with their own drum & bass beats on Missy’s 2001 single Get Ur Freak On it seems insane that this, the first official jungle remix of a Timbaland production, isn’t better know.
Jungle Brothers - Jungle Brother (Urban Takeover remix)
Urban Takeover - aka Aphrodite and Mickey Finn - took jungle back to the hardcore days, their playfully loud approach to music bridging the gap between drum & bass and happy hardcore in the mid to late 1990s. Their classic 1996 single Badass, for example, has a bass line that combines the unhinged lunacy of hardcore with the low-end pressure of jungle, delighting both camps.
The duo’s remix of Luniz’ I Got 5 On It was a lot of fun; but they utterly nailed their sound on a remix of Jungle Brothers’ Jungle Brother in 1998, its irresistible bass bounce and utter joie de vivre eating the UK whole. I can’t even listen to the - actually very decent - original now, so perfect is the remix.
Reprazent feat. Method Man - Ghetto Celebrity
Following Goldie, the next drum & bass producers to work with an American rap star were Roni Size’s Reprazent, after their debut album New Forms was a big hit, even making an impact in the States.
Reprazent had form in working with vocalists. Dynamite MC, one of the great jungle MCs, was actually in the band and his turn on New Forms opener Railing is a fantastic (and relatively rare) example of how to capture the MC’s live art on record. New Forms’ title track, meanwhile, features Philadelphia MC Bahamadia in a masterclass of minimalist funk, whose dazzling fluidity betrays its tricky beginnings.
“Me and Suv came up with the beat and I sent it out to Guru from Gang Starr, R.I.P, as I was a big fan,” Size told Music Radar in 2013. “He basically said, ‘It's not for me but I might have someone who'd be interested.’ So he gave it to Bahamadia. When I got the vocals back they were pretty much out of time. She couldn't really get the rhythm and was all over the place. So I took every word and pieced it back together in the Roland S-760 sampler and looped bits at the end to make it longer.”
It’s a shame that Guru didn’t want to give a Size and Suv’s drum & bass beat a try. It was around this time that Outkast used their own jungle-inspired beat on the classic B.O.B, while Missy Elliott and Timbaland’s Get Ur Freak On combined bhangra groove with jungle tempo to give Missy one of her best-loved songs.
What’s more, Reprazent’s collaboration with Method Man on Ghetto Celebrity, from the band’s 2000 album In the Mode, definitively showed how open-minded rappers raised with little knowledge of rave, hardcore and jungle could thrive over a 178 BPM beat, while staying true to their flow.
(And let’s certainly not forget Reprazent member Krust’s fiery collaboration with Saul Williams on Coded Language, which I wrote about recently.)
Adam F feat. Redman - Smash Sumthin (Roni Size Remix)
Jungle’s warped extremism requires extreme levels of production nous. So it is a surprise that more jungle producers haven’t taken their sonic skills to hip hop. Perhaps the most obvious example of when this did occur is Adam F’s big budget rap album Kaos: The Anti-Acoustic Warfare, which featured an impressive roster of US MCs, including Redman, M.O.P., LL Cool J and Guru.
The album was OK - I remember being more impressed by the guest list than the actual music - but Roni Size’s VAST remix of Smash Sumthin is the highlight of the whole project, shoving a flaming vat of rocket-ship fuel under the so/so original to create a heart-racing anthem. The whole album really should have sounded like this.
PFM - The Western (Conrad remix Feat MC Conrad)
I did say this list isn’t about jungle MCs. But I am going to break that rule to include a personal favourite of mine: the Conrad remix of PFM’s The Western, which was first released, as far as I can remember, on the 1996 Logical Progression album. Conrad is the MC most associated with LTJ Bukem and his Good Looking Records crew, of which PFM were a key member. His remix of The Western sees Conrad providing vocals in much the same way he would do in a club (see also Reprazent’s Railing) and what a beautiful thing it is.
Some listening
JIM - Phoenix (X-Press 2 On Fire Remix)
There is a small part of my heart entirely devoted to acoustic guitars, indie vocals and house beats - see the Spiritual Life remix of Beth Orton’s Central Reservation in particular - and X-Press 2’s take on JIM’s Phoenix worms its way right into that particular atrium. It is a gorgeous and ever so slightly psychedelic house heater that feels like it will never overstay its welcome, pitched perfectly between euphoria and melancholy, with just the slightest idea of Latin influence.
Barcelona beat bohemian Asra3 continues with his quest to lever 18k brilliant melodic ideas into every song on gabufa ranupi, taken from his debut album mama encen la ñocla, released yesterday (Tuesday) because Fridays are just too boring. gabufa ranupi sounds, simultaneously, like it has been sped up and slowed down, its dembow (ish) rhythm sputtering over the track like soup from an uncovered saucepan, to which Asra3 adds a sublimely sad melody, like the best of 90s IDM or the Detroit techno that inspired it.
Shygirl has real star power, something I realised when I saw her at Primavera Sound Los Angeles in 2022, when the (young, fashionable) crowd went absolutely nuts to her set, singing along to songs that had yet to be released. She also has a real dirty club vibe, which comes to the fore on Making The Beast, an exclusive track from her new Fabric compilation. She underplays the vocal here, almost more of a reluctant club MC style (do reluctant club MCs exist? Probably not. Imagine it.), her voice gently pushing along the grainy house beat, dragging it out of a repetitive hole. The resulting track is so 4am dance floor, you imagine it would dissolve in the daylight.
The playlists
Go long, with approximately five days of the best new music from the last four years (pro tip: you can change the order so that the newest songs go first. But you probably knew that.) Or go short, with just the six hours of new music from this year. And we’re only a quarter of the way through it. Either way: go. Just go.