An overdue concept record badly missing a companion disc: Here is a
batch of relatively obscure Stax sides all sampled in generally more
successful hip-hop hits — with explanatory liner notes.
If you’re familiar with the rap singles that deploy these sounds,
then what this record presents is evidence of sampling at its best
— not wholesale appropriation but recontextualization or
lifting stray elements and converting them into new music: the Isaac
Hayes piano lick Public Enemy deploys on “Black Steel in the Hour of
Chaos”; the Little Milton vocal hook that comments on the verses of
Ghostface Killah’s “Walk Around.”
Honestly, the hip-hop songs that borrow are, in most of these cases,
better than what they’re borrowing from. Whenever I hear the Emotions’
“Blind Alley” or Isaac Hayes’ “Hung Up on My Baby,” I’m always
disappointed I’m not hearing Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half-Steppin'”
or the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me.”
Taken out of its hip-hop context, this is a good collection of Stax
sides most casual fans will not own and may not have heard.
(“Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic” — Isaac Hayes; “After
Laughter (Comes Tears)” — Wendy Rene; “I Forgot To Be Your
Lover” — William Bell) — CH
Grade: B+