Showing posts with label Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock. Show all posts

Friday, May 19, 2017

The Original Co-Defendants

Here's a nice, little indie 90s record by a group called the Co-Defendants.  And who were they?  Well, actually, there's been a couple "Co-Defendants" in Hip-Hop, and sites like discogs have them all mixed up; so first let's clarify who they're not.

There's a Boston duo called the Co-Defendants, consisting of Carlito Cream & Don P who had an album out called Book ov Life and were part of a larger clique called the Messiah Fam.  Those are different guys.

Killarmy did an entire album with a French group called The Co-Defendants (possibly named after that Killer Bees Swarm song?), who also did some other overseas stuff I never kept track of.  But those are also different guys.

There's a duo from San Francisco who I never heard of until I googled them just now, comprised of two solo artists: Beneficial and S. Kush, who came together as The Co-Defendants to record a couple singles in the late 2000s, called "Big Boy Shit" and "Just Like Me."  Those are different guys, too.

Similarly, when California gangsta rappers 12 Gauge Shotie and Lil B-Stone teamed up to record an album together, they called themselves The Co-Defendants, and they're very different guys.

Tragedy's mix-tape/ album Thug Matrix had a track featuring some guests called The Co-Defendants, but that was just his regular guys Killa Sha and Napoleon; and I think that's the only time they went by that name.  They definitely didn't make this record.

There's a group called The Co-Defendants from Lansing, Michigan, consisting of J-Holla and 3rd Deggree[sic.] who released an album called The Patdown in 2009 or thereabouts.  Not the same guys.

And Big Noyd released a compilation album of his crew a few years ago, called Co-Defendants Vol. 1.  No relation there either.

Nah, these Co-Defendants predate all those other Co-Defendants, forming in 1993 to release a tight record called "Get Cha Weight Up" on Bon Ami Records, which is one of those Sugarhill spawn labels.  It got a lot of underground play on Stretch & Bobbito, The Wake Up Show, and mixtapes by DJ Red Alert, DJ Enuff, etc.  It was basically just one guy, Bain D. Robinson, who did all the vocals and the production, though his DJ/ hypeman Craig Brown rounded out the group.  They even had a guest verse by Rob Base, giving him a much needed injection of underground credibility again.  It was hot, but pretty much their only record.

Except trust Echo International to dig out one more obscure 12" out of an artist's discography you thought was finished.  That's their specialty, and sure enough, they did it again.  In 1994, they put out "Just When You Thought" by Co-Defendants featuring Omar Chandler and C.E.O.  Who are they?  Well, I think C.E.O. is just an alias for Bain.  Because nobody's rapping here except for him, and C.E.O. also gets production credit on the liner notes for a song that Bain had credit for on their last 12".  So I'm pretty sure they're one and the same.  And Omar Chandler?  Well, he's an R&B singer who had an album out on MCA Records, and previously worked with Teddy Riley.  But he's probably best known as the guy who sung the hook on "Joy and Pain."

So yes, that means an R&B hook.  Chandler has a great voice, but it definitely drags the proceedings down.  The beat, produced by D. Moet (presumably the D. Moet, who used to be with King Sun), is decent but feels slow and feels cheap.  Like, it's got some simple drums and a piano loop, mixed with some more g-funk style bass and whistle.  It's well crafted, just a little under-cooked.  Maybe it just needed a better engineer.  And the chorus detracts from the rapping, which is a shame, because lyrically, it's actually a serious, compelling song.  C.E.O. has a definite Grand Puba style and sound to his voice, but he's a little less playful as he talks about the grind of life wearing you down, "just when you thought you had it all figured out, each and every day something new pops out.  Inside the city, everybody's gettin' high; white people knock every thing that you try.  But when you succeed, they suck 'till you bleed, each and every drop 'till they get what they need.  If they're so smart, why's the world so sick?"  Heavy shit.  I wish there was a remix of this.

Flip this record over, though, and happily we're back to Bain's more rugged production.  Actually, the first song on the B-side is "Get Your Weight Up" again, with the instrumental.  If you're a completist, you'll still want the original Bon Ami Record, because that had some exclusive remixes, but the classic version with the ultra-smooth sample that got all the play in the 90s is conveniently on both.  This is the essential cut.

But then there's one more B-side, another new song called "Who Are We," where Robinson shares production credit with Brown.  It's not as great as "Get Your Weight Up," and the hook's a little limp; but it's another cool, raw indie NY record with a chunky beat.  The whole thing feels inspired by early Just-Ice records, but with Bain still flowing in his distinct style.  With the exception of Killa Sha (can't front on him), this guy clearly has way more talent than all those guys who took up the Co-Defendants mantle over the years after him.  It's a shame he didn't have more of a career, because sure, he never would've blown up to be the next Jay-Z; but I'm sure this Co-Defendant had some more slick indie 12"s in him.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Giving DJ EZ Rock Back His Due

About two weeks ago, the world was shocked to learn about the passing of DJ EZ Rock. When I tweeted the sad news, I linked to the best article I could find about it, which happened to be from Rolling Stone. I paused, because I noticed some misinformation, but I decided to just let it slide. I mean, nobody looks to Rolling Stone for highly informed hip-hop coverage. And no one else had published anything better. At least they knew his partner was Rob Base and that they made that song from the Sandra Bullock movie.

So here's what Rolling Stone wrote that's wrong: "Bryce would not appear on Rob Base's 1989 follow-up The Incredible Base, but reunited with the rapper for 1994's Break of Dawn."

They probably just sourced that info from Wikipedia, which says, "DJ E-Z Rock also was forced to leave the group due to his own personal issues, so Rob Base was left to be a solo artist.[citation needed] He responded in 1989 with The Incredible Base, his debut solo album. It did not sell as well as It Takes Two. One song from the album hit the dance chart in late 1989: "Turn It Out (Go Base)," credited only to Rob Base. Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock had a reunion album in 1994."  Citation needed indeed.

I only blog about it now because it seems everybody is reporting this fact...

Billboard wrote that, "Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock would split soon after [It Takes Two] only to reunite in 1994." HipHopDX wrote, "While Rob Base followed up It Takes Two with a solo album of his own called The Incredible Base, the duo reunited six years later." Consequence of Sound wrote, "E-Z Rock was not featured on Rob Base’s 1989 record The Incredible Base." XXL wrote, "Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock would split after the success of It Takes Two for personal reasons," TheBoomBox.xom wrote, "After the success of that album, Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock split up due to personal reasons, only to reunite in 1994 for their second album,‘Break of Dawn.’" The Huffington Post wrote, "E-Z Rock was not featured on Rob Base's 1989 album, 'The Incredible Base'..."  I could go on and on. There's tons more articles saying the same few sentences, all clearly having just copied the wikipedia or each other.

The Truth:

Yes, their first and third albums are credited to Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock, while the second album only lists Rob Base as the artist. That much is true. But Rob Base did not make The Incredible Base (or any other album) without EZ Rock. They made all their records together and none separately. EZ Rock is all over The Incredible Base; and it's impossible to miss for anybody who's ever actually listened to it.

Rob Base starts off the song "Get Up and Have a Good Time" by saying, "Now with the help of my man EZ Rock - and I'm Rob Base - we're getting ready to kick it off." Then, in the same song, he says, "EZ Rock in the back on the wheels." There's plenty of songs with cuts on them here (they're the only good part of the song "War"), and you certainly don't see anybody else credited with them.

Big Daddy Kane's albums are just credited to Big Daddy Kane, but that doesn't mean he broke up with Mister Cee right before every release. Cool V was still The Biz's DJ even though his name wasn't on the covers. Neither DJ K-La Boss or DJ Scratch's initials were part of EPMD, but they were still the group DJs. You get the point. DJs just typically weren't credited on hip-hop albums, especially as we moved into the 90s.

And since Rob Base's music was moving further in the direction of pop on The Incredible Base, it made even more sense not to have split the bill with his DJ. Like when MC Hammer dropped the "MC" from his name. And after that flopped due to the push-back against crossover rap, he decided to make a bid for hip-hop credibility again for his reunion comeback album in 1994, by returning to the old school style of crediting the DJ. Maybe there really were some "personal issues" between them around this time; but EZ Rock was definitely still on board for that middle album.

Hell, the man has his own solo song on The Incredible Base, called "Dope Mix." You know, one of those fresh DJ solo songs like "DJ Premier In Deep Concentration" or "Touch Of Jazz," where the spotlight is finally turned towards the man on the turntables? In fact, "Dope Mix" would make the perfect song to feature in a tribute article about him, much more appropriate than just "It Takes Two" again.

And see the photo at the top of this article? That's a screenshot of him doing the cuts in the official music video for their lead single, "Turn It Out," which they keep cutting back to. He was hardly hidden away. But because some random, uninformed internet user decided EZ Rock must have been uninvolved with The Incredible Bass, suddenly it's become the unquestioned history put forth by every music journalist who's never listened in the first place*. So call me nitpicky - I admit I might be going in a little hard here on what many would probably consider a negligible detail - but I just wanted to write this to let you guys know that this rumor you're reading everywhere** isn't really the truth, and to give EZ Rock his credit for this album.

RIP


*And how long will it be until somebody resolves that "Citation Needed" issue on the wiki article by linking to some of these articles that got this tidbit from the erroneous article, completing the circle of irony and "proving" the misinformation?

**They even wrote a song decrying rumors just like this on The Incredible Base. It's called "Rumors." :P

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

It Takes Two

"It Takes Two" is a hell of a record. Over surprisingly street edged beats, it defined the concept of dopey but catchy lyrics, not just to rap audiences, but to the popular culture as a whole. Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds were able to bond over it 20 years later in a major studio romcom, and the writers didn't even have to explain it. It not only predates similarly effective crossover mega-hits like "Bust a Move" or "Ice, Ice Baby;" Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock frankly did it better. This is a song that had one of the earliest bleeped out curse words in MTV's history, just so Rob could say, "I like the Whopper; fuck the Big Mac." Not even Greg Nice or The Beastie Boys could make meaningless non-sequiturs so memorable.

It was such a success, Rob & Rock wasted their entire careers trying to sequelize it. Whether it was a pretty flat-out sequel like "Get On the Dance Floor," or just an attempt to recycle the rhyme pattern (on "Outstanding" - listen to the bit about how he showers with "soap on a long rope" - it's total flow xerox) or the the famous "woo! yeah!" vocal sample* (the remix of their "Joy and Pain" single). Even "I Wanna Rock" on the Rocky V soundtrack was sampling his famous line from "It Takes Two" (well, one of many) for the hook. But this is hip-hop; we don't want knock-off sequel records. We want answer records.

And for some reason, girls always seem to make the best answer records. From The Symbolic Three to Super Nature (later known as Salt N Pepa) to Dimples D to Pebblee Poo to Evette Money to Ice Cream Tee to The Real Roxanne to Rappin' Roxy to Tricky Nicky to The Ghetto Girls to The Glamour Girls to PreC.I.S.E. to the queen herself, Roxanne Shanté (just to name a few).  There's just something purely hip-hop in the way that one gender rises to challenge of the other. Whenever the guys get too big and full of themselves, the girls come out to tell the other side of the story and take 'em down a few pegs.

And entering the to square off against "It Takes Two" is Florida's Icey "J" with her debut response, "It Takes a Real Man" on JBM Records. She uses the same "woo! yeah!' break as Rob and Rock, but subtly adds some faster, hyper, Miami-style beat elements to the mix. And lyrically, she answers and parodies Rob line for line. "I wanna rock right now; I'm Rob Base and I came to get down. I'm not internationally known, but I'm known to rock the microphone," becomes, "I wanna rock right now; you're Rob Base and you tried to get down. Now you're internationally known, but you still can't rock a microphone." And she keeps it up the whole way through, it's a constant, direct line-for-line response.

I mean, damn, look at this brief comparison. There are more words that are the same between the two songs than there are that're different!


"My name is Rob;
I got a real funky concept.
Listen up,

'Cause I'm gonna keep you in step.
I got an idea
That I wanna share.

You don't like it, so what?
I don't care."


vs.

"Your name is Rob,
You got a real weak concept.
Listen up,
I'm gonna put you in check.
You had an idea

That you wanna share?
I don't like it, so what?
You better care."


That bit might sound corny, but more often than the disses are cold enough to be genuinely amusing:

"You don't like Buddha?
That's okay,
But you can't stand sex;
You must be gay!"

"You're nothin'.
Yeah, that's what I say,
Rob Base,
You and your fat DJ!"

"I heard you flirt
With DJ Red Alert;
Took off your shirt

And laid you in the dirt."

She even opposes his bold fast food declaration: "I like the Bic Mac, fuck the Whopper!" Jeez. And just to seal the deal, Icey's brought along her own DJ to nimbly out-perform EZ Rock's closing cuts. Okay, admittedly, that wasn't tough to do... is he even using the turntable, or just repeatedly pressing the sample button? But Icey's DJ actually cuts it up really nice.

This 12" includes the full version, a shorter Radio Edit and the Instrumental. Better still, it features the all-original B-side cut "Icey 'J' Is On Wax," which really showcases Icey's skills, flexing her really impressive fast rap delivery over a banging beat and more nice cuts by her DJ. It shows she wasn't just a one-trick novelty rapper with an answer record; she and her DJ were the better artists (and Icey did go on to release a couple more records under the modified moniker, Icey Jaye). That's probably the hardest diss of all, and it also serves to make this record a lot more desirable even after the novelty of the A-side has worn off. ...Not that it's worn off for me yet, after 24 years. lol


*Not that Rob and Rock were the first to use it, mind you. It's part of a classic Lyn Collins break they borrowed from Shanté and Marley Marl's "Go On Girl."