![]() (You can listen to Jeff's winning routines here ). It's a scene that rightfully opens up the very first episode of Smith's new podcast, a good indication of exactly how important that battle was to Will, Jeff and the entire hip-hop world at the time. While Will had the movie-star chemistry and funny stories, Jeff was the music obsessive and the innovative record-spinner who implemented new techniques - most notably, the robotic-sounding "transformer" scratch, which Will takes credit for naming in his 2021 memoir.Īnd Jeff was the one who proved his hip-hop bona fides by defeating all comers and being crowned the best DJ in the land at the 1986 New Music Seminar. That's largely because Jeff was the virtuoso. But when it came to DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, unlike some of their predecessors, it was clear they were a team: Not only were they co-billed, but the DJ's name came first. This division of labor - one person on music and one on lyrics - worked perfectly in hip-hop, a genre that came out of parties where a DJ spun records and someone on a mic hyped up the crowd. ![]() ![]() The prominence of musical pairs would continue to grow over the next few years, largely because of technology.Īs a 1987 Philadelphia Inquirer article headlined "Pop’s New Dynamic Duos" pointed out, "The electronic age has yielded not only a new kind of music, via synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines, digital audio computers, hardware and software, but it has also spawned a new kind of group: duos in which one sings and the other pushes buttons." īut the Philadelphia duo of Jeffrey Townes and Will Smith went beyond their predecessors in several important ways, and set up a prototype of the rapper/DJ - or, as music-making techniques changed, rapper/producer - combination that would explode in the years following their success.īy the time Jeff and Will (and their third member, beatboxer Ready Rock C) released their first single in 1986, duos were a thing in pop music: Soft Cell, Erasure, Eurythmics. ![]() Well before that, '70s hip-hop pioneer Kool Herc was a DJ known for getting the party started with rhymer Coke La Rock. There was Mantronix, consisting of MC Tee and producer Kurtis Mantronik, who had their first hit with " Fresh Is the Word " a year later. Most notably, T La Rock & Jazzy Jay released the influential 1984 single " It's Yours ," Def Jam's first release as a rap label run by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. There were plenty of rapper/DJ duos before DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. So with all that said, here we are: 15 of Snoop Dogg's most popular and most dynamic songs. A quick note: this list does not include songs that appear on another artist's album (hey, we had to draw the line somewhere!), so there's no "Nuthin' But A 'G' Thang" or "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted." And we tried to pull from all eras of his career, so it's not all Doggystyle (though you should, of course, listen to that classic in its entirety). To celebrate the anniversary of Doggystyle 's release, is revisiting the D-O-double-G's biggest and best musical moments. The album sold around 800,000 copies in its first week, and set the stage for Snoop to become a superstar, one who would eventually reach a stage of pop-culture ubiquity that mid-90s rap fans - and those people who saw his scowl on the cover of Newsweek as the literal face of the question of whether rap was too violent - could have never imagined. So the world was primed for Snoop's solo debut Doggystyle when it was released into the world on November 23, 1993. Then there were his memorable contributions to Dre's The Chronic, which came out in late 1992. First there was "Deep Cover" from the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Most in-the-know music fans were aware of Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he was then known) because of his collaborations with Dr. Thirty years ago, a rap music legend began his journey to immortality - and to Martha Stewart.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |