Summer officially begins tomorrow, although just about every state in the Union has already been suffering through stifling heat. In music there’s always been an obsession with summer albums and summer tours, and in hip-hop, there’s always been a strange obsession with a “summer banger,” a universally loved song that comes out near the beginning of each summer that can presumably be heard in every car throughout June, July, and August. The idea never made that much sense to me, to tell you the truth. I’m a man of habit who likes to return to old standards and tradition. There are a few albums that I always associate with summer that I also try to come back to when June rolls around. And wile the list of these albums grows each year, there are always some albums that I have to play.
So, below are a few examples of stuff I listen to when the weather gets hot. I tried to stay away from obviously stuff or albums with obvious titles. And most of these albums are still in print and readily available should you choose to check them out.
Pete Rock & CL Smooth – Mecca and the Soul BrotherThis one is sort of obvious, but it epitomizes summer music for me. I remember going to the sadly departed Leopold’s Records early on a Wednesday morning and buying this before I had to take my Art History final, the last final of my junior year. Considering how much I tried to stay focused about taking my finals, it shows how much I felt I NEEDED this album that I went to buy before my final started. Despite the fact that side-trip to the record store required me to park pretty far from my high school, the distance likely leading to some asshole breaking one of my car’s windows (only to steal absolutely nothing), it was worth it. After sliding that tape into my car stereo that June afternoon, I don’t think it left the deck until July. I’d compulsively listen to Side A, flip it, throw on Side B, rinse, repeat.
There was a time I knew every note of that 87-minute album, from “Return of the Mecca” (still my favorite song on the album) to “Skinz,” and all the interludes in-between. It’s the perfect marriage of one MC and one producer: CL Smooth sounds perfect rhyming over Pete Rock’s beats, and Pete Rock’s beats sound like they were creating perfectly for CL’s lyrics. It’s among my ten favorite albums ever, and as soon as I see I cloudless sky in late May,
Mecca and the Soul Brother gets played.
The Studio One and Trojan Records collectionsIt’s probably the association with the tropical island of Jamaica that makes these collections sounds so good during the summer months. For those who don’t know, Studio One and Trojan Records were two of the preeminent record labels, for Jamaican music, pioneers in the realms of reggae, dancehall, ska, and dub. Studio One, founded by “Coxsone” Dodd and considered by some as the Motown Records of Jamaica. Trojan Records was actually a British record label that specialized in distributing reggae, dancehall, ska, and the like across the pond. Both are best known today for reissuing collections of their music, which was mostly made and originally released during the 1970s.
For the last week or so, I’ve begun my annual revisiting of the Studio One albums, listening to them on my iPod while driving from place to place. I bought the first one, Studio One: Rockers, back in 2001; the album served as kind of a “sampler” for what the label had released in its hey day, with subsequent compilations are loosely built around a theme or “style,” like say, “DJs,” or “Roots” or “Scorcher,” etc. Regardless of the “style,” there’s still something about the rumbling bass and the skanking grooves the make songs like The Brentford All-Stars “Greedy G” ideal for rolling down the highway on a sunny day. Studio One still reissues compilations, but the prices seem to be increasing. I remember the first batch cost the same as a regular CD, the newer ones seem to be selling for more than $20. Frickin' imports.
With Trojan Records’ compilations, I never have to worry about consistency price: the three CD, 50-song “box-sets” consistently cost around $17.99. But at the same time, you get what you pay: a hastily thrown together collection of 50 tracks even more loosely based around a “theme,” with shoddy packaging and little effort thrown into their production. Personally, I don’t make care about the shoddy production and album “construction.” I’ve loaded 12 of these box-sets into my 200-CD player, and on a lazy summer weekend afternoon, I push play on my CD player, lay down on my futon with a glass of lemonade, and pretend I’m listening to commercial free Jamaican radio.
Johnny Five – SummerI said I was going to TRY to avoid choices with obvious names; I made no guarantees. I have no idea who the hell Johnny Five, the hip-hop artist, is. I don’t’ know, what, if anything, he’s done before or since this album dropped in 2004. Sure, I just know he’s likely not the talking robot that starred in two movies with Fisher Stevens doing glorified blackface.
I vaguely remember getting
Summer sent to me by some publicist. I also remember sweating out the hot afternoons in my second floor room of a shared apartment in San Jose, during the misbegotten period of my life when I lived in the South Bay, listening to this album. I probably also can’t tell you why I like it so much; Johnny Five is not a very good rapper. He’s pretty corny to tell you the truth. It’s probably the beats that makes this sucker such a winner, with the mellow vibes the songs create set my adrift on memory bliss.
Bone Thug N Harmony – E. 1999 EternalI know people stereotype summer music is “light” or “airy” or happy in some way, and E. 1999 is exactly the opposite of all that: It’s dark, creepy, and filled with gun talk and homicide. Still, I can’t remember the last time I listened to this album when the calendar didn’t read June, July, or August. The heavy murkiness of tracks like “Down 71,” “No Shorts, No Losses,” “Die Die Die,” “Mo’ Murda” are aural versions of the oppressive summer heat, while “Budsmokaz Only,” “Mr. Bill Collector,” “Buddah Lovaz,” and the once-ubiquitous “First of the Month” all have an odd ethereal quality. And the whole thing sounds damn good when driving wherever during the small hours of the night.
The “middle” period BBE albums: DJ Spinna – Here to There, DJ Jazzy Jeff – The Magnificent, King Britt – Adventures in Lo-Fi.These are a set of albums I associate with my misbegotten years I spent in the South Bay, particular the summer of 2003. A year before I heard
Summer, I spent many a July night sweating in my west-facing room in the apartment. West-faced room plus heat rising = a lousy combination. Still, these three albums particularly
Here to There, frequently relaxed me.
The basic behind these albums released by BBE (Barely Breaking Even) Records was to showcase hip-hop producers. The label would give them relative carte blanche to put together an album showcasing their production skills, and let them pair up with MCs, singer, vocalists, etc. the felt like working with. The first two releases in the series, J Dilla and Pete Rock, were honestly pretty boring. Which was disappointing for me, considering those are two of my favorite producers ever. But when the second wave of albums hit in 2003, they really found their groove. All three albums were a strange brew of hip-hop, neo-soul, electronica, and house. And considering I tend to hate the later three of those genres, it’s amazing I like these three albums so much. All three producers created music that sounded great when MCs like Bahamida, Last Emperor, Freddie Foxxx, Quasimoto, and Apani B. Fly MC were rapping over it, and just as good when soul singer Jill Scott was doing spoken word to it. These were a good combination.
