Raise it up

2 great artists R.I.P.
Left: J Dilla (1974-2006)
Right: Baatin, who just passed away today.

J Dilla aka Jaydee and Baatin were two thirds of Slum Village. Here's the beautiful video to Slum Village's beautiful tune "Raise it up":



Fun fact: The quirky sample is lifted off a house tune, Thomas Bangalter's "Extra Dry". It starts off with the sample - a bit reminiscent of 8-bit/chiptune music - but gets increasingly noisy, distorted and abstract along the way:




Thomas Bangalter of course was one half of the influential French house duo Daft Punk. Their body of work was raw and innovative ... but at the same time incredibly club/mainstream friendly. It makes you wonder why they haven't been sampled more often. Sure, there's Kanye West's "Stronger" which is probably the obvious choice cause the original was a huge hit and has that nice memorable talk box chorus. Since it's Kanye it comes as no surprise though that his version is quite wack and pales in comparison to Mickey Factz' take on "Robot Rock". Good decision on Mickey's part to keep it simple and NOT to throw it in the neo (read: watered down r&b) hip hop blender, but straight loop the original and rap over it cause it ROCKS. Reminds you of the old days when hip hop was not afraid of appropriating contemporary dance and disco songs.




Check out his hyper-eclectic heaven's fallout mixtape where he samples everything and everyone from Bjork to The Prodigy to a Wes Anderson movie soundtrack back to Uffie to The Smiths to Daft Punk and Jamiroquai etc. etc. Hit and miss mostly but when it hits, it hits hard.

(What's up with Mickey Factz though? All that good stuff was from 07/08. This year so far: disappointing.)