thomas bangalter - extra dry (mp3)

slum village - raise it up (mp3)

daft punk - aerodynamic (slum village remix) (mp3)


with the first anniversary of jay dee/j dilla's tragic death tomorrow, i thought my first foot forward onto this blog should involve the unearthing of a handful of james yancey-associated material. poignantly released the same week as his death, yet not in the cynical vein as other posthumous rap releases, dilla's masterful donuts has deservedly received unanimous adulation in the last year, from the rawest of rap pages to the trendiest of style mags.

however, I want to return to the pre-stones throw days of his native detroit collective slum village. one of the prime underachievers in mid-late nineties rap, the sv crew were long-championed by the the entire hip-hop community following dilla's legendary production work for heavyweights from both coasts such as de la and the pharcyde. somewhat foolishly touted as the next tribe - not least by q-tip himself - the trio of t3, baatin and dilla struggled through contract disputes and countless bootlegs, remaining largely unknown outside of america until the 2000 release of their first official album, 'fantastic, volume 2', on french label source.

a patchy lp, the set nevertheless contained the underground detroit club anthem 'raise it up'. the song - unbelievably - was energised by a sample from thomas bangalter's 'extra dry' (off the classic trax on da rocks 2 ep) after Dilla heard a bootleg album assuming it was the work of some obscure techno producer who would never notice. inevitably though, bangalter caught the video on mtv and immediately recognised his sound happily married to rap. rather than demanding royalties, the parisian deemed it cool to be sampled by such respected hip-hop performers and instead asked sv to remix one of daft punk's tracks in return. the result was the reworking of 'aerodynamic' from 2001's loved-or-loathed 'discovery'.

so here it is. dilla combined an astoundingly simple loop of the original's borderline-cheesy accordion with neck-snapping digital snares and irresistibly understated raps from all three sv members, thus cementing one of dance music's most wonderfully serendipitous, unexpected and all too brief artistic unions. oh yeah, and it trumped the neptunes' remix of 'harder, faster, better, stronger' on the very same 12" hands down.