Just a Summa Day

Here's another nice summer jam. Coming straight out of the House of Hits in '94, Sah-B put out her first single on Reprise Records on the strength of her cameo on The Lords Of the Underground's hit, "Flow On." With a distinctively high-pitched voice, hardcore flow and clever punchline-style rhymes, Sah-B was definitely creating a buzz, and this attempt at a mainstream crossover release may've been a poor choice for a debut to an audience who would've been hoping for a reprise (no pun intended, but it's there and we're all just going to have to live with it) from just that sort of thing at that time... but it's still pretty nice.

Like you'd expect from a summer jam, this Marley Marl produced song is a relaxed, take-it-easy type record with a brief flute sample, keyboard, light bassline and slow drums. A hook by Avery Moore that goes: "It's just a summer day... come out and parlay. Come out and parlay," sets up Sah-B easy listening rhymes (written by Mawiyah Britton. Sah-B's real name is Sakinah Britton, so who's this? Her sister? Mother?):

"People fake sick just to get the day off,
'Cause it's too hot to work; the heat'll make your head hurt.
The heat sometimes'll make you aggravated;
And those without ACs are really frustrated.
Mosquito bites just gettin' to ya,
And the sweat got your PJs stickin' to ya;
So you jump into the shower,
Stay about an hour,
And throw on the Johnson's Baby Powder."

Here's the cover of the cassingle, so you can see the kind of vibe they were goin' for:

But it's the b-side, "Some Ol' Sah-B Shit" that's the star of this show. Produced by K-Def, with nasty horn samples, intense scratching, a banging piano loop and Sah-B (this time writing her own material) ripping it ill and hardcore, this is Sah-B living up to everything her burgeoning fans were hoping for, and then some. There's a warning on the label, "Attention: Track B1 may not be suitable for on-air/in-store play." Yeah, it sure ain't. And it's better than anything the Lords or any of Marley's other acts managed to come out with at the time; she really just kills it over one of K-Def's best tracks.

Now, here's an ad that ran in a summer issue of Rap Sheet:

...Note (if you can... AOL seems to've shrunken it a bit) that it mentions her "forthcoming debut album on Reprise." Sadly, this never materialized. The cassingle credits go a bit further, mentioning, "the Reprise album Some Ol' Sah-B Shit, available on cassette and compact disc (4/2 - 45716)." Now I'm no marketing guru, but surely that title was shooting themselves in the foot. Sah-B did attempt an independent comeback a few years later (of course, as always, you can see all the specifics on my Sah-B page), and continued to appear on the subsequent LOTUG albums, but her increasing attempts to sound more conventional (read: boring) really worked against her.

As far as I can tell, Sah-B's no longer recording (though maybe when LOTUG comes out with another album, she'll return), and I can't find a myspace or anything... Here's K-Def's myspace page, though. And here's Marley's (not to be confused with this, unofficial Marley Marl myspace page).

Tags: Sah-B, Sakinah Britton, K-Def, Marley Marl