Digital - Goldie

Couldn’t believe it when I saw this on the Ciao site! It’s quite a few years old now, and in the fast moving world of Drum and Bass that is a lifetime. It’s a single and a meeting between two journeymen in their respective fields. KRS1 has been around for donkey’s years, educating and schooling the Hip-Hop fraternity in “the message” of his ‘Boogie Down Productions’ Philosophy.

Positive ...
...KRS teamed up with Goldie to issue this release way back in ’97. At the time it was the first collaboration I had heard between a US rapper and UK jungle producer. It may have been Goldie's connections on the other side of the Atlantic that got him the deal in the first place, since he lived there as a younger man – indeed the beaches of Florida are where he earned his famous teeth!

Either that, or it was the emergence ... more

Couldn’t believe it when I saw this on the Ciao site! It’s quite a few years old now, and in the fast moving world of Drum and Bass that is a lifetime. It’s a single and a meeting between two journeymen in their respective fields. KRS1 has been around for donkey’s years, educating and schooling the Hip-Hop fraternity in “the message” of his ‘Boogie Down Productions’ Philosophy.

Positive role model and all round good guy that he is, KRS teamed up with Goldie to issue this release way back in ’97. At the time it was the first collaboration I had heard between a US rapper and UK jungle producer. It may have been Goldie's connections on the other side of the Atlantic that got him the deal in the first place, since he lived there as a younger man – indeed the beaches of Florida are where he earned his famous teeth!

Either that, or it was the emergence of the Jungle phenomenon in ‘93/4 and the record company’s slow moves to capture the market that led to this joint effort as late as ’97. This is when most youth involvement in this scene had already started to drift towards UK garage or elsewhere, pushing out any market for this type of single. As a consequence it didn’t sell particularly well at the time.

However it’s not a bad record, with tight rhyming, as we would expect from KRS1 and the production values of Goldie’s side staying tight as a gnats rear end. No over indulgences here, things are kept popping along quite nicely. Analogue bass stabs and a clattering drum pattern keep this listener interested throughout.

In the light of more recent efforts by jungle and hip-hop artists, this may look a little dated – as does the more jazz based record with Redman and Roni Size sharing the credits that came out around the same time ( You can find this on “Doc’s Da name” – a Redman album) – it’s well worth hearing.

Also see Adam F’s Breakbeat Chaos label for more recent releases in this vein with M.O.P. and others, if you would like a comparison with the more modern style of doing things. For me though the Goldie and KRS1 track has a more developed feel to it, sounds more immediate and seems to hold my attention better.

The other remixes on the single didn’t do much for me, Lemon D remixes as Boymerang and does a passable job, but the momentum is stripped a little from the original. I don’t know what they were thinking letting Armand Van Helden remix the remaining two versions. Very poor showing from him here, it doesn’t look like he put in much effort.

To sum up, I’d recommend this to any Hip-Hop or Drum and Bass fans out there that haven’t heard it – it’s a curiosity and a fairly nice one at that, and seems to be available from Ebay at about a fiver. I wouldn’t pay more than that for it though, since there is only one really good tune here. If you were thinking about parting with some cash, a quick buzz around second hand record shops in London’s west end should see you paying a couple of pounds less for the privilege.
 

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