Giving The P-Man His Props

For those that don't know, P-Man was sort of the third member of Young and Restless.  Like, if you looked at the back of their album, he seemed to be their DJ/ producer; though the conventional wisdom is that he was really just the money man, managing and financing the group while somebody else did all the music.  And he may not even really have been much of a money man if you heard what Dr. Ace and Prince P. said when they fired him after he got sent away for drug trafficking before their second album.  Well, that's all as may be, but P-Man was an actual DJ and he definitely did the music for his 1987 solo 12" from Bound Sound Records called "Rock it Baby."  And it's dope.

No, P-Man does not rap on this.  This is a DJ joint, in the tradition of "Touch of Jazz," "DJ Premier In Deep Concentration" and those other all-too rare songs where the DJ got to shine and his turntables were given the lead track rather than a rapper's vocals.  Admittedly, the scratching might sound a little rudimentary today compared to later examples guys like Magic Mike or DJ Aladdin would come up with just a year or two later.  This is more akin to, say, N.Y.C. Cutter (Marley Marl)'s "DJ Cuttin."  But that was an important record in its day.

One element that immediately makes "Rock It Baby" stand out is that it loops the same famous riff from Rick James' "Super Freak" years before MC Hammer's "U Can’t Touch This" blew it up.  The P-Man came first!  But this record doesn't rely as heavily on it, frequently flipping the script and changing the root samples and drum machine effects its instrumental is based on.  And then of course he's cutting up various soundbites like Kool Doobie saying "perpetrators praise me" from the Whistle classic "(Nothing Serious) Just Buggin'" on top of that.  Again, a lot of the scratches are fairly old school and basic, but if you pay attention, he lays in some trickier, more forward looking tricks in there, like some scribbles.

Oh, and it's worth noting that there are two versions, the Scratch Mix and The Other Mix.  Both actually feature full scratching and stuff; it's not like one is just a dub mix or something.  In fact, you might not notice the difference on a first, casual listen.  But they are different lengths with different edits throughout.  I guess you could say The Other Mix is an extended mix, lasting approximately two minutes longer and letting more of the beats ride unencumbered for a while.  As such, I'd say the Scratch Mix is the tighter and more energetic of the two, and it has a couple additional keyboard samples (it sounds like he's mixing in "Saturday Love" maybe, but it's hard to tell because he's juggling it so much), but The Other Mix is nice for when you want to just vibe out to a longer-lasting experience.

P-Man did return to music when he was released from prison sometime around 1993, including a group called If Looks Could Kill with his then wife, and the Polo Boyz/ Dynaztee.  He later changed his name to Sam Silvasteen and got into publishing Hip-Hop mags and websites, before he was tragically killed in 2009.  So his image has almost always been about his management, his various businesses (on both sides of the law), his beef with Rick Ross, etc.  But it's worth remembering he had this fresh little record with his own music to his name, too.