Track-By-Track: O/B #22
Looking retrospectively at the flow of this set, this record and the next are a bridging point between the machine funk of what's gone before and the disco that's soon to come. I could claim that that was my active intellectual choice at the time, but I'd be lying. In truth, if there was any reason to the rhyme it was purely subconscious. I guess that's what being a DJ is about though, especially when things are going well: your consciousness disconnects from the objective decisions of what to play next (and how to play it), delegating the task to the proprioceptive machinery you've built up through simply playing and loving your records. That's the sensation I have sometimes of the records selecting and playing themselves.
The Brother D was an alias for Bad Boy Bill, one of those names that always jumps out at me in a record shop. This is a classic hip house record on which Bill replicates all of the tropes of the genre: assorted funk breaks (most recognisably the Mardi Gras bells break that had been popularised by Run-DMC's 'Peter Piper') are boosted by contemporary drum sounds and samples from Hamilton Bohannon's disco classic 'Let's Start The Dance'. It's a fun exercise to listen to The Brother D and then go back to Bohannon, because it reminds you quite how future-sounding the extraordinary 'Let's Start The Dance' always was.
Side note: although I'm apt to play hip house vocals when they enhance the flow of a track (e.g. Precious 'In Motion'), when they distract from it – as in this case – I always prefer the instrumental.
The Brother D. - Everybody Dance (Instrumental) (City Rhythm, 1989)
(Discogs)
Note: this is an entry in the Track-By-Track series for my mix for O/B.
Track-By-Track is a series that looks back at records you will have heard in my mixes, one by one in the order they were played. Who made them, and when? How did I come across them? And what do they make me feel?