I just wanna say right off the bat that Amber hooked me up with every step of this journey, I did some very sparse research to hook it all together, but the real work was all done for me. So hats off to her for this, it’s a good one.
It started with her gettin’ curious about this Monica jam from back in ’95, when she was only 14 years old!
Monica – Don’t Take It Personal (Just One Of Dem Days)
She did some lookin’ around and found out that it used some elements from a couple songs, one a little more recent than the other.
LL Cool J – Back Seat
The Detroit Emeralds – You’re Getting A Little Too Smart
Now if you listen close to the drum beat in that Detroit Emeralds song, you might just recognize it from more than a couple other tunes from around that same time as the Monica song.
Raekwon – Incarcerated Scarfaces
Common – The Light
“The Light” isn’t the only place Dilla used that drum beat in his production, it’s in this Slum Village track as well.
Slum Village – Climax
Just like that Minnie Ripperton eye-opener from a little while back, this is another good example of a bunch of songs that I’ve listened to bunches of times but somehow I never put together that they shared some common ancestry until I heard the song that they were all pulled from. It’s especially surprising that I never noticed this because “The Light” has probably one of my favorite drum loops of all time, it just totally takes me over the second it starts. But I needed somebody to walk me through realizing that all these other songs that I listen to all the time use those same drums. Thanks for the illumination, as always, Amber.
