The Divine Beings are Winner!

On Three Times Dope's somewhat maligned second album, they flipped a killer sample from a Curtis Mayfield/ Impressions classic called "We're a Winner."  It's just one of those loops, with a perfectly subtle bassline playing underneath a completely catchy guitar, horn and... xylophone(??) riff.  You know, just one of those loops that blows your mind and makes you want to hear it over and over again.  But lyrically, though EST is of course a great MC, it's kind of a flat narrative rap about relationships.  Not exactly the kind of hyped up, skill flexing flow you want to accompany such a fresh, high energy break.  So I was excited two years later when Ali Dee, the white kid from The Next School who became one of The Bomb Squad, wound up using it for his lead solo single, "Who's da Flava."  He's on a higher energy tongue-flipping freestyle flow like you'd hope for, and it's got a pretty funky scratch breakdown.

Let's face it, though, Dee's a bit corny.  So I was excited to buy the cassingle, but once I really dug into it, it fell a little short.  I still played it a bunch (it helped that he had G Rap drop a guest verse on the B-side), but it could never really hit the spot.  Someone still needed to come around and really rock the track right.  And that's when the Divine Beings came out.

The Divine Beings are the two people you see on that picture cover up there: The Wizard (the dude on the right) a.k.a. Air Smooth and Da Gr81 (the girl on the left).  They were a duo out of Philly who dropped their first indie 12" in 1992.  I never discovered that record until many years later, though, thanks to the internet.  I, like most of us, first encountered them when they were briefly signed to a major and came out with this "Funky Ultimatum" single on Warner Bros' Reprise Records in 1993.

There's actually a step in between their first single and their Reprise single, but again, I didn't know about it at the time.  They first released this 12" on 4x4 Records.  Then Reprise picked it up to give it broader, nationwide distribution.  The 4x4 had an exclusive B-side called "Sounds of Hip-Hop," but this one had a cool picture cover and more mixes of the title track.  And the title track was the one I was amped for anyway, because that's the one over "We're a Winner," with the best MCing to date.

The Wizard, who co-produced this with Kwame, does the majority of the rhyming, and I believe, the cuts.  He's on a fun, tongue-twisting freestyle tip very much in the same vein as Ali Dee.  But apart from a few limp, dated punchlines ("we make more noise than Bugle Boys"), he's just a little nicer on the mic, and definitely less corny.  Then, to really sell this song, Gr81 comes in and kills it with a smooth if not downright sultry, jazzy vibe.  Think of Jean Grae on those Herbalizer records, when she was still known as What? What?.  Just a short verse but it's niiiice.

At least on the Extended Version.  The Single and Radio Edits, also on this 12", and even the one they had the video for, actually cuts out Gr8's verse.  It's just like when they cut Ice Cube out of "Express Yourself" - The song still works without it, but seriously why??  Anyway you cut it, though, this is one must-have single, and thankfully their easiest to find cheap, because of Reprise.

Unfortunately, though, it wasn't the break-out success it should've been, and Reprise dropped the Beings.  Gr81 wound up appearing on Kwame's last album.  In fact, I asked about her in my interview with him, and this is what he said: "Oh, the GR81. She was an artist outta Philly that I was trying to develop. She was dope. I was working with this AIDS awareness repertoire group that I did some appearances with and music for. And she was one of the kids in the group. Well, she wasn’t a kid, but she was one of the people in the group. I thought she was kinda hot, so I said come on this album and let’s do a duet. That’s how that one happened." And that's about all we got from the Divine Beings... until Dope Folks released a bunch of tracks from their shelved album on vinyl a couple years ago.  Kwame's on the intro and one of the tracks features an early appearance by Black Thought.  All the Divine Beings stuff was dope, and it's a real shame they're still barely recognized to this day.  They're certainly the best to ever rock this "Winner" loop.