Funk's undoubtedly their father, but outside the Sugarhill Gang's use of Chic's "Good Times" as the rhythmic base of "Rapper's Delight," popular history has often neglected the symbiosis between disco and hip-hop. Compiled by Sean P, Rock It… Don't Stop It! features some of the rarest tracks from 1979-1983, when aspiring MCs adapted popular club-rocking tracks of the day, backed by crack rhythm units.
Although nothing here matches the greatest hip-hop or dance music of the era, the majority of the ten tracks assembled assert that both styles made a more than inspiring combination. Jazzy 4 MCs mine the same territory as the Funky Four Plus One by copping Cheryl Lynn's 1978 classic "Got To Be Real" on "MC Rock" into an eight-plus-minute party-rocker featuring some impressive verbal dexterity and a bottom-heavy slice of boogie, while Terry Lewis and Wild Flower's "The People's Message, Take Two" opens with a stark dramatization of domestic violence that name checks a litany of urban woe a la Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" over a brisk Patrick Adams-inspired track.
The track also features a long snippet of a Martin Luther King Jr. speech about five years before the likes of the Bomb Squad made such sampling commonplace.
(BBE)Although nothing here matches the greatest hip-hop or dance music of the era, the majority of the ten tracks assembled assert that both styles made a more than inspiring combination. Jazzy 4 MCs mine the same territory as the Funky Four Plus One by copping Cheryl Lynn's 1978 classic "Got To Be Real" on "MC Rock" into an eight-plus-minute party-rocker featuring some impressive verbal dexterity and a bottom-heavy slice of boogie, while Terry Lewis and Wild Flower's "The People's Message, Take Two" opens with a stark dramatization of domestic violence that name checks a litany of urban woe a la Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" over a brisk Patrick Adams-inspired track.
The track also features a long snippet of a Martin Luther King Jr. speech about five years before the likes of the Bomb Squad made such sampling commonplace.