D-n-A – Hip-Hop and The Black Arts Movement
Sound Mind Productions
Rap/Hip-hop
There was a time not so long ago when one could walk into the local music shoppe and be pleasantly surprised. During my formative years, I used to frequent a spot called Dr. Wax in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. I never left that store without spending twenty minutes in front of the tape case. I was always looking for a cassette to take a chance on. Something that I may have heard a word or two about, but not enough to purchase it based on reputation alone. A tape with the right blend of artist name, album title and artwork… It was usually eight dollars well spent.
Those times have long passed, but this EP from D-n-A (no fancy group name; straight up old school) reminds me of that era. Like many of the tapes that I took a chance on back then, its packaging looked homemade and it sounded like it was recorded in someone’s basement. But beneath these economic bindings lay the kind of intentional funk that all of us can sense is missing in contemporary hip-hop.
The Chicagoan duo is made up of producer D-Steele and rapper Aquil. Mr. Steele is an old school beatsmith, preferring chopped and looped jazz samples and boom-bap drum kits to the more commercially viable synth-sounds of today’s popular producers. The only drawback to this is that they may never be able to afford the sample clearances necessary to bring these kinds of tracks to the masses. Just in case you were unsure how you should feel about this, let me make it clear:
Fuck Sampling Laws.
Most of that money goes to industry-savvy lawyers and publishing companies anyway, meanwhile the original artists die penniless and hungry.
Tasteful sampling like the techniques used in creating the beats for this EP are what hip-hop was borne of and these sorts of tracks remind us of hip-hop’s last golden age. MC Aquil’s musings on subjects ranging from the origin of a non-profit agency to a love letter to his long-term (sounding) girlfriend bring a sincerity that most of his screwfaced peers eschew.
If I were sure that a copy of this album was somewhere near you, I’d tell you to buy it. Since I know it’s not, the best I advice I can give you is to go support your local grimy hip-hop artists. The more you consume, you increase the likelihood that they’ll grow in capacity and expand the reach of their wares past your local tavern. Sooner or later the majors take notice and it’s off to exploitation-land…
…I guess no one promised any of us a happy ending…
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