D'Angelo's "Devil's Pie"

But the slides won't the pie, why it's why till we fry watch us all stand and lie, folks like sun to devil's pie. I think at the time I heard it, I thought it was more like these are all terrible things. And like I heard the moralizing now when I hear it, I sort of hear like, and I hope I'm not putting something on the Angelo that is not there, but it's almost like he's saying, these are the temptations that I personally am being faced with. I hear that too. And I don't want it, but yet we're programmed to want it. But it definitely feels a lot more personal. It's about temptation. It's about we can't control these things that are out there and tempting us in its life. All right, Luxury. So today we're honoring an artist who epitomizes black genius. His music blurred the lines between gospel, funk, hip-hop and jazz, proving that soul music could evolve, challenge expectations and fill time with all the ones. That's right, T yellow. And today we're highlighting a song that was arguably a bridge between his debut and sophomore albums, foreshadowing the right innovation and spiritual vulnerability that was to come. That's right. Today we're talking one song, and that song is Devil's Pie by Daniel. I'm actor writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Room. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury, aka the guy who whispers interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You'll hear these songs like you've never heard them before, and you can even watch one song on YouTube. And Spotify, while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, Diallo. Today we're going to pay tribute to an absolute legend that we lost this year, DeAngelo. This one hit us all pretty hard. Yeah, I think we're still dealing with it. You know, ironically, we had just talked about DiAngelo while discussing Neil's soul, just a couple of days before it happened. Crazy. It was very friendly. I had just bought the record. It was on my turntable. I was listening to DiAngelo when I heard the news. It was right there. The cover was staring at me. It's crazy. He was in the air. He has always been in the air. He's obviously his music. Yeah. And I know that anybody who's ever worked with them or was close with him, still feeling it. So there's a little raw as we try and dive into this song and this this this legendary singer. And I'll even say ever since we started the show, DeAngelo was an episode that we wanted to do. You know, it was something that we wanted to do for the very beginning. There are a couple of people, you know, from from Björk to Whitney. There's certain people who just if you appreciate singers, you know that like, oh, we got to do an episode about them. So we're doing this episode admittedly because we're all thinking about him right now. And hopefully everybody will come away feeling like we've only celebrated this once in a lifetime artist. Diolaridol, when was the first time you heard DiAngelo? So I got brown sugar in the mail when I was working at my college radio station. And DiAngelo immediately stuck out to me. First of all, he had cornrows and a leather jacket, which back then was like code for like, you know, probably like I'm a rapper. I mean, he's coast rapper specifically, you know, there was that I'm a thug, you know, that was out there because of a two-pock. But then when I put on the music, he was singing these beautiful soul songs. It was crazy that these two things together. I just remember being impressed by how his visual style and slang were very much rooted in the present of the mid 90s. Meanwhile, his sound was more informed by the past, but in a good way. That's really well said. And I had the same impression. There was something surprising about when he opened his mouth, whether it was to sing with his incredible vocals, but also just talking. He was obviously such a thoughtful person, like his creativity. It was all tied together with who he was. Very authentic, very vulnerable. His vocals are so vulnerable. And real, the fact that they were, and we'll be getting into this when we listen to the stems, they were so raw and unprocessed and unperfected. They're authentic. Authentic. They don't all line up perfectly. They don't all hit every single note exactly. This is when Pro Tools exists, but that isn't being used for any music. And I think it's exactly perfectly who he was as a person. And I also think it's a little bit about the timing because if you think about it, this is a time when we're still living with sort of like the polished, key sweat. R&B singers typically still wear suits and look like very smooth. It was like that GQ Smooth vibe that Eddie Murphy has in Boomeray, you know, but this was decidedly not that. He's not doing that. He's just doing him. And yet he's still able to sing these beautiful ballots. I think it's one of those things that artistically when everybody else is saying, I'm going to the right. He was like, I'm going to go left. Like it's just something completely off into a different direction. I thought creatively, that's what kept him so interesting for the start. What about you, Luxury? What was the first time you heard the angel? It was definitely the iconic video for Untitled. That was the first time I saw and heard and the entire package was delivered and I can receive. It's a beautiful man with a beautiful voice and a beautiful video. The artistic everything was all encompassing. And of course, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. We're going to get into this a little bit later, but that video made a big impression. A lot of people. In a time before social media and everything being online, you can almost say it went viral, so to speak. Everybody was talking about it. And of course, I'm talking about the iconic Untitled video where DeAngelo is shown shirtless. Gradual reveal that he's shirtless. It's a single shot and it rotates around his body while he sings this incredibly beautiful, vulnerable song. And it just gives you the entirety of who he was in one video. But of course, was also controversial. We'll be talking about a little bit later. Let's talk about that. The implications of how this video was for him as an individual for his career. Absolutely. Since we're here to pay tribute to the Angela, why don't we back up a bit and talk a little bit about how DeAngelo, aka Michael Eugene Archer, got his start in Richmond, Virginia. So DeAngelo was the son and the grandson of Pentecostal ministers and he grew up in the church. There's some incredible early footage of him in the church, like singing and playing piano. He's an incredible keyboard player. He started playing when he piano when he was three. My three-year-olds have just not been this impressive. No, no, they've been underwhelming. I just wanted to talk to you about there. And in addition to his early piano prodiginess, he also joined the choir at age five. So music is in his blood at an early age. Plus, he was just born with something special. So he was taught these things and he was in the church environment to learn and grow at them. But there was also some seed that was just who he was. I think there was clearly something going on there. It's also such an analog period in time. I do think that there's so many digital distractions for kids now. Their creativity goes elsewhere. But at this time, it was just like, I have all these musical thoughts. I got to join a choir. I'm fine, but I got to do something with my life. Not only was DeAngelo growing up with a heavy dose of gospel, he was also soaking up the sounds of legends like Prince and Al Green. There were also newer artists at the time talking he's sweat. I'm talking about the band guy. Like, he's digesting all of this too. It was interesting is that DeAngelo has said it was actually Teddy Riley's fusion of hip-hop and R&B that really pushed him into start making his own music. You know, we talked on the show about New Jack Swing. Now, Ralph Sugar, for those who've heard it, we know that's not anything we would ever qualify as New Jack Swing. But you can clearly hear DeAngelo blending hip-hop and R&B in his own way. And that's one of the things that makes him so unique. Let's check out a bit from the title track for Brown Sugar. That song. And you can hear so much of what's coming in his future in that because it's like that old organ in there. Yeah. Sounds like a church organ. A ham and organ. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, by the way, he played all the instruments on this. Yeah. It's just he's just him and I'll say he's Mohammed, right? I'll actually try. He's Mohammed, one of our unsung heroes because I don't think that I knew at the time that he was a part of this project and he surely was. I'd also be remiss if I didn't play my favorite song off of this album. I love his remake of Cruisin by Stokey Robinson, yeah. But really, Lady, which is Raphael Sadeek produced, I believe. This song just sends me. Here's a little bit of the album version of Lady and here's a gem for fans of the angel. This is a live version of the song on the Chris Rock show back in 1997, performing where Raphael Sadeek, Alicia, he, Mohammed and Questlove, like I said, on the Chris Rock show, this is Lady Live. So fun to see them all young like that. Yeah, great footage. It's not new, Jack swing, but it's swing. All these songs have swing. Well, they do have a swing and I think that some of that has to do with Raphael Sadeek and I just realized while watching that clip, to me, Raphael Sadeek is like now Rogers. He's a little bit like for real. He has his own recording career, but you get the sense he actually enjoys producing for other people too. I think so participating in all of these incredible other. Yeah. Yeah, seeing him like on that stage, like sort of like, you know, bouncing around with his guitar, like you get that says he's very much in his eye-create music because it makes me happy space. Yeah. And I love Rafael so big, it's just he's done so many things with Tony, Tony, Tony or Lucy Pearl or DeAngela, like it just people slept on his album, Instant Vintage, great album and if you ever get a chance, please go back and listen to that. No, you're right. He's kind of like Mark Ronson's kind of a similar figure where he's a producer, a songwriter, he has his own career, but he's also constantly collaborating and you see him like playing based on stage with maybe, you know, Bruno Mars or Lady Gaga, whoever it is. And he enjoys that, yeah, he enjoys being part of the eclectic mix of music, making. I love this quote from DeAngela about his approach to combining R&B and hip hop. He said, quote, "To me, it's not melding the two worlds so much as it's exposing where they meet in the middle." That's great. And I cannot agree more. It's not that he was melding, he was literally just saying like, "Hey, there's so much shared culture here." It's overlapped, yeah, that we're not exploring, you know, in some of the contemporary R&B of the moment, let's, let's go a third way. And I'll say as like a guy who was primarily hip hop at this time, like this was R&B that I could really get into, like in a real way because there seemed to be so much happening sonically that felt almost more hip hop to me than even R&B at that time. I wonder if it's just the organic instruments because I am trying to find what that middle ground is. It's such a great quote and I hear it, but I'm trying to tease out what the specifics are. In some ways, maybe it is that there's an organic drummer. But it's programming, actually, on Brown Sugar, I looked it up, but you know, I believe it. But I feel like, you know, if I'm just thinking about the R&B at the time, like nowadays, it's actually hard to put yourself in a time capsule and go back and be like, "Oh, this, yeah, there's, of course, there's R&B that sounds like this, not at that particular moment." Yeah. It was mostly digital. It was mostly cinematic production. It was very smooth. Yeah. I love Keith sweat. He's a great guy. Totally and artistically, but everything was very smooth. It's very clean, very smooth. But this felt different. This felt more for the lack of a bit of term, like grimy and gritty and it felt more like, it felt more like East Coast hip hop at the time. Well, obviously, DeAngelo's Brown Sugar was, as a breakthrough record, something that put his career to the next level. And that's a record that he worked on with Bob Powerett, should be said. Go back to our tribe called Quest Episodes are too harder for more about him, an engineer, who really brought out a lot of the sonics. But DeAngelo has said, upon reflection, what he was wanting to do for the next record, was go a little bit of a different direction and go back to what the demos sounded like before they turned into the final version of Brown Sugar. There was something in those demos that he had done at home with a foretrack just by himself, where once it got produced, it lost something to him. There was something that changed. And it came time to make voodoo. It was an exploration and a search for something that didn't really have a name. And that was a big part of the process. And we'll be getting to that later. What's crazy is I feel like I hear exactly what DeAngelo's saying. Like I absolutely hear where there is a smoothness in the Brown Sugar album that's definitely thrown out by the time that we get all the way to voodoo. But there was a process getting there and sort of along the lines of talking about that process of getting there after the huge success of Brown Sugar. DeAngelo started feeling the pressure to follow it up with something just as big. And that led to some serious writer's block. He was also getting frustrated with being labeled Neo Soul, which is funny because I think that we talk about John around the show all the time. We use these terms like Neo Soul and New Wave, so it's easier to talk about music. But in our heart of hearts, it's not so that we can put the artists that we love into a box. So I even understand why DeAngelo did not feel totally comfortable with the idea of Neo Soul. What we've talked about before, and it's worth saying that even the term Neo Soul was actually created and marketed by his then manager, Cedar Mass and Bird, what actually broke him out of this crippling writer's block was the birth of his son. He had a son with Angie Stone who had also loved to do an episode about the birth of Michael Archer Jr. and Kay Swavo Twain. In fact, the first song he wrote for Voodoo, "Send It On" was something that he and Angie Stone wrote together. Let's hear a little bit of "Send It On." Love that song. Okay. It's like the tightest, coolest, untite rhythm section of all time. Tight, untite. What's going on in that rhythm section? Well, just one thing that happens a lot in both albums, actually, we've been discussing is the sidestick on the drum kit, like this use of the stick to hit the rim. Yeah. It's not a rim shot, by the way, common, common misconception. A rim shot is very loud. A rim shot is like, you're actually hearing the snare and the rim at the same time, so it's really loud. Yeah. But a sidestick is that really kind of cool mellow, it's very jazz. It's softer. And it's all over both of these records. I've spent time with Questlove in the studio sometimes, and every now and then he'll just be there and he'll be doing that little sidestick right there. I didn't know they had a name. That's pretty cool. It's Moschill, man. Moschill. Let's shout out some of the incredible players on "Send It On" and the rest of Voodoo. We got Questlove on drums, Pinot Paladino on bass, Banky Alfred on guitar, and Roy Hargrove on trumpet and flute war. And I also want to mention Russell Lovato as Mixer and Head of Junior, and also Sugar Steve who is a buddy of mine, and I know that like so many who worked on this album, Voodoo. There's a lot of hurt. There's a lot of sadness, but we're here, like I said, to celebrate. And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the credited, by the way, interpolation or interpolation on the song. That's right. Cool in the gang, C.A. of Tranquility is interpolated at the very top of the song. So here it is in "Send It On" and then I'll play for you the source of what was replayed. Cool in the gang's C.A. of Tranquility from 1969 sounds a little like this. Hi, that's a fair cop, you know. You used that. Absolutely for it. And you know what? It actually tracks with the stories that they've said, which is that they would go into the studio and they would watch all these VHS tapes and self-burden DVDs. The quest love had of these performers. You know, they were digesting all this stuff. Absorbing and digesting and really, like, the word ingestion is a huge process for a year from what I've come to here in all of the interviews. And there's many wonderful interviews with the quest love and D'Angelo and the rest of them. They'd spent almost a year at Electrical Research. Actively reporting. This isn't like one of those things, right? Yeah, I would meet back up in a couple months. They would, they said, quote, the majority of the time we would sit and watch prints and that's how the process would start. We would sit in front of the TV from seven in the evening to nine o'clock. We would watch performances over and over again. And then they'd go to the studio and just having, like, absorbed into their bodies, the experience of watching and listening to this music and talking about it and playing records. Then they would go to the studio and start playing. And it would gradually morph and evolve naturally into original material. It starts as they may be covering an idea or taking a little fragment of something they'd heard and expanding on that. And before you know it, it becomes something completely new. And sometimes it doesn't, such as in this case where they're like, you know what? Let's just keep that go on the game thing we liked, which is what they ended up doing on this song. And I have to say this, this is all self-archived material. Think about the year everybody. This is like late '98, '99, like, you don't have YouTube nowadays people were like, oh, have you ever seen a Jimmy Hitchwich before him on that weird late night show with the, you know, like, here it is. Now you just jump there and you go there, like, this is all stuff that like almost like in his backpack. Quessam is walking around with like every episode of SoulTray in his pocket. And that's so important to realize that, like, that's the level of commitment that you had to have back then to be able to produce to somebody and say, hey, by the way, I've got all these performances on tape or on DVD. Quessam likes to say that at the time before there was YouTube, he was YouTube. He said that he was the guy that everyone would send the archival to like, rare footage. He would go from, you know, country to country with touring with the roots. And people knew that Quessam just was absorbing, he was a collector. So they'd give him not just records and B-sides of like, you know, records, not just musical material, but also VHS tapes of like rare archive, like, you know, live performances that had never been, you know, released publicly of rinse and, you know, sliding the family stone. So he just kept all this stuff. I think he's got lots of warehouses somewhere in Philadelphia. And this was the material that they absorbed. And they were able to sort of swim in their influences in the process of making this record. Quessam, by the way, called these treats, quote, unquote, like these, he said, we had all these treats laying around. And they would study these treats. And he said that they had a handful of influences in particular that he called, he referred to as the Yodas. So the Yodas were Jimmy Hendrix, George Clinton, Prince, I think Sly Stone, Al Green, Fala Coutie were all in the mix as like, these were the ones that were particularly absorbed into their musical bloodstreams in the process of making this record. That's so interesting because all those guys like lead bands. That's a really good point. These are all like individual vision areas, musical vision areas, sort of put the pieces together with different musicians from album to album year to year. All these guys were families. They were literally like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington in that sense. I mean, one of their influences is clearly Jimmy Hendrix. What could you tell us about the relationship of Voodoo with Jimmy Hendrix? Jimmy Hendrix was at the core of the operation here. Jimmy Hendrix, first of all. Well, this is recorded at Electric Lady Studios, which at the time go back to our Jimmy Hendrix, by the way, double episode. We talk about the making of Electric Ladyland, the record at Electric Lady Studios, which was-- - This is like it should be the opposite, right? - I always get that-- - Electric Lady should be the song. Electric Ladyland should be the place. - I do, I do classic, it is classic me to get those two confused. - Oh, I think we're all confused. - Electric Lady is the studio, and when they came to Electric Lady, they hadn't really been used in a long time, but when they walked in the doors, and they saw all the iconic, like literally the Rhodes keyboard that Stevie Wonder had used, and like the Jimmy Hendrix wall, it's like the '70s music that they have been listening to and absorbing. This was the place, and this was the vibe, and this is where they sat for a year and change. Jamming, eventually turning the jams into songs, and just living and breathing, and the music, and Jimmy was sort of the central shrine in all of this was Jimmy Hendrix. Literally images of him throughout the studio, of course, this being the place where he made that record, and they literally jammed on Jimmy Hendrix songs to, that was the genesis of the song root, came out of jamming on a handful of tunes from Electric Ladyland and Access Bold as love. So there's a lot of Jimmy in the mix in this record. ♪ I love my mojo, mojo, let my mojo in my face ♪ - Oh, I hear the Jimmy. Why is that so good? Why is music so good, but why is that music so good? - That music's so good, because you get the sense that they were in the studio, 12 hours listening to all their favorite stuff, and they're like, "Ah, let's record." - And the dryness of all of it is so real, 'cause they're not adding lots of reverb and effects. There's almost none, like I don't hear any. There's probably a little bit. But the dryness makes it very intimate. You hear it, it's like they're in the room with you. - It's like a musical whisper, like they're right there in your ear. - And by the way, I really heard the Jimmy having teed it up with that, like knowing the backstory for the song "Castles Made a Sand" like in that guitar line, it's not the same, but I hear the influence. I hear where you start with "Castles Made a Sand" and you tweak it to the sideways from it, and you have a completely new song that comes from it. ♪ So castles made a sand fall in the sea eventually ♪ - So this song is a good example of what Quest calls the drunken bee. The Angela famously wanted him to drag the bee versus playing it straight, which gives it almost like a wobbly feel. - Yeah, it's good work for it. - We've talked about Dylan's influence on the Angela in the past, let us know. What places this? - Listen, go back to our "Far-Side" episode. It's one of my favorites. They're all great. We don't have any bad episodes. But on the "Far-Side" episode, we go into more detail about Dylan. I do some demonstrations. Basically, though, in a nutshell, here's the summary. If you want to really broadly talk about how time, musical time works, there's usually straight time and then there's swing time. But then there's this third category called Dylan Time. That's Dan Tarnas' phrase. And actually, JD himself called it simple complex. It just means that multiple things are happening at once in the stack of instruments. And so that's a very oversimplified way of explaining it, but I'll just be really clear. Some of the things that might be swung, so you might swing the kick drum, while the high hat remains straight eighths. That's what happened in the demonstration for "Far-Side" for "Running." The eighth notes are, "Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh." But where the kick and snare come are not on the grid. They're a little bit ahead. - Not that they're not precise. - They're a little behind. They're usually a little bit behind, but sometimes they're a little bit ahead. So this idea of Dylan Time is just playing with, the lines between swing and straight time, the lines between one instrument is playing this one. Another one is playing, like one instrument could be swung, but the bass might just be straight, but even within the instruments, and this is what Quest famously, he's talked many times about how he trained himself to sort of have the kick drum sound like a drunken, five-year-old or something like that, right? Well, the snare might remain on the two and four. So that's kind of this idea of playing with time, and it shows up throughout this whole record, kind of on all the instruments. Sometimes it'll be in the drums. A lot of the vocals, a lot of "Dangelose Vocal Delivery" plays with back phrasing and being just a little behind, but maybe one of the harmonies is right on. It's amazing what it does for this record. And unlike most of the songs on "Voodoo" that were played, like you said, with live instruments, and with this live jam feel, "Devil's Pi" started off as a beat produced by the legendary hip-hop producer, DJ Premier. The story goes that it was originally intended for the rapper cannabis, who passed on it, but when "Dangelose" heard it, he loved it immediately. We're gonna take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we're breaking down the magic behind "Devil's Pi" from the gritty samples to those wonderful "Dangelose Vocals" when we get back. - Guys, "Wayfar's Black Friday Sale" is the perfect time to score a huge deals on all things home, no matter what your style. - Wayfar is the place to shop for all things home. Everything from sofas to spatulas, you name it, they have it, and you can get up to 70% off during "Wayfar's Black Friday Sale." That's our "Devil Wayfar" also has styles that you can't find anywhere else. No generic pieces, you've seen under times. 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It started with DJ Premiere creating this beat, which I will now play for you. (upbeat music) And that's it. A Toobar loop, a kick, a snare and a high-hat program. By the way, I should say. So DJ Premiere originally from Houston, Texas. He named his Chris Martin, but he started as wax master C before becoming DJ Premiere or Primo, as he's famously known. With Guru, he was in the duo Gangstar. And then of course, very famously and epically as well as a DJ/producer, did cuts including and not limited to nods as New York State of mind. He had a kick in the door for Biggie. (upbeat music) It's almost too much to name. You got come clean by J. Roo the Damager. You got, I mean, that's, his production career is intense. It's insane. - Right, but it's crazy about it. - Primo, Superstar, all that stuff. ♪ As I watch my friends die ♪ ♪ But all I can do is shim back and cry ♪ ♪ These are feelings I'm expressing through my rhymes ♪ ♪ I've been through all times so many times ♪ - You could keep on naming names. You could keep on going and going. What's crazy though is I find a quote where he talks about how at heart, he's still thinks of himself as mainly a DJ. He's DJ Premiere and quote, "The producing pays the bills." - What? - Yeah, I know. - Really? - Yeah. - Like, that's insane. - I know, he's got, that's like Leonardo DiCaprio. He'll be like, yeah, I got this pace up and it's really my helicopter design. Like, within the world, that's, I never knew that. - He's a very talented man on the decks, but also on the MPC, he doesn't both. But DJing, his identity, it sounds like DJ Premiere. It says it right there in the title, it says DJing. - Well, yeah, so he produced this track. It's an amazing track. - So I'm gonna recreate, by the way, the samples coming up. But first, let me just quickly walk you through his process. So what we know about DJ Premiere's production process at this point in 1998 when this track was made was that he had two accais, he had a rack mount S950, which was his main sampler. That's what he would use to sample records and to get the sounds into the device. But then he would actually use his MPC 60 with the 16 pads, the class I can tell. As a performance device, that was his instrument. - The one that gets shout out on all the 90s hip-ups. - The MPC is the hip-hop tool of choice. - Yeah, and specifically the 60, I want to say. - The 60, right at this point, the 60 is the one. So he uses it not as a sampler, but just to trigger the sounds. Cool quote from DJ Premiere. He said, "I tend to program my drums, but a lot of the time, I'll turn off the 16th notes, meaning the quantization, which would get a perfect." And I'll play the MPC live. So it sounds like live drumming. I like it to sound loose. That's why my drums have a little bounce to them. I'm not sure on this track. That's a two-bar loop what I just played for you. Across the entire song, I listen the entire way. There's a little bit of variation. So he might have played this one on the pads. He might not have, but I'll play them for you. I'll recreate what he might have done with his MPC 60. - Oh, cool. - This is a Nikai device made for the digital age. So this is a way to trigger sounds that are coming from Ableton, but it's not that dissimilar from the idea behind an MPC, which is that there's eight pads here. I'm holding my device. It's got aid of what he would have had 16 pounds. each of which you put a sound in. So in this case he's chopped up three sounds. There's a kick, there's a snare, and there's a hi-hat. So from that quote again, he may have programmed the pattern across the song, or he may have performed it like this. All right, I think we can call that successful. 92% accurate. I love that boombap. It's the boombap. It's that boombap, DJ premiere, just really known for it. It's not so good when you were in your headphones walking down the street, you know, feeling yourself. Yeah, it's got a little bit of swing. It's got that like walking down the street, swing to it. It's not straight. It's good. It's that second picture on that 16th boom boom boom that gives a little bit of a sense. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I always said it felt a little bit like a beat down, but you also might just be walking down the street. Like a beat down. I grew up in a violent neighborhood. Let's talk about the bass. What's going on with the bass in this song? And by the way, can I just say I think the bass is one of the other just, I mean, obviously defining features of the song. It sounds so good. Not only is it the defining feature of the song, this song has like kind of four things in it. It's that's drum beat. We just listened to the bass we're about to hear. DeAngelo's voice and then pepper throughout Sprinkle throughout. There's a handful of samples and scratching. Yeah, but it's a really sparse song that's really centered on it. And very dark. I mean, like you got to remember coming out of Brad Sugar, which was like beautiful and lush like cruising and lady and being those dreamy eyes of mine. Like those are so beautiful. And then this song comes and it sounds more ominous and dark. Yeah, you know, that that part of it. It's yeah, it's this sparseness. I think contributes to the darkness. I totally I think, you know, it's a little bit like what we're talking about. Rises production for Wu Tang. Yeah, that sparseness kind of creates a darker vibe. Yeah, there's all of the harmonic content. Although the polyphony in the song is in the vocal. Yeah. There's only a single bass note that you're ever hearing at any given time. There's no guitars. There's no keyboards. There's no chords being played across the entire song except in the vocal stacks. And boy, those are some big chords when we hear them in a moment. Absolutely. But first, let's start with the bass. Come on. That was cycling through my head all night long. By the way, that is so good. Why did I just say, come on, like I'm coming on. Come on, you know, man. They didn't say, let's go. They said, come on. Come on. It was everybody. Come on. I thought you're doing an ODB thing. Come on. Come on. We're going to come on. Different song. So let's talk about the bass. This is not contrary to what you might think from listening to the rest of the record and maybe knowing about it. It's not Pino Paladino, but it sounds very Pino Paladino, isn't it? That's crazy to me because I guess not knowing, you know, the intricacies of music production at the time this came out. I would have assumed that the same bassist was on the entire album. It really fits into the record. It's really interesting how that happens. Like there's something about the tone and the choice of notes. And even the melodicism, I'll talk in a minute about the strangeness of what's happening in the notes that are being played. But first, I'll recreate it because this is a sample that comes from a Teddy Pendergrass song from 1977 called "And If I Had." That's what makes Premiere a freaking genius, dude. Just this little film at the beginning. That little intro doesn't even have a rhythm to it. It's just a slide into a song. And he re-worded our brains so much. I love stuff like that. I can't pretend to be anywhere near the genius of a Premiere or a Dilla, but I do have the ear of someone who's been chopping breaks for two decades now. You go about the world and you hear an isolated section of something. Yeah. It starts with drums. I remember being at a cafe when I first started producing and I heard a train in vain by the clash. I'm like, I'm going to go grab that kick and snare. And then your whole life unfolds in front of you. You're constantly like, I'm going to go grab that isolated thing. Premiere's brain does many things that I don't understand. But he heard this and he's like, I can take those bass notes and build a new bass line out of it. I guess for me, it's just almost like a tempo thing, right? It's almost like a, there are times when you'll hear like a weird little part of a song. Yeah. And because it's already into the song, and there's always like four, four time or whatever, like you'll be like, Oh, that small little snippet. But this is even not even that. This is like something that technically is not on a time signature yet. It's the slide. I see what you're hearing. Yeah. What you're hearing in that moment, it's free-floating. It's the top of the song. It's about to introduce you to what ended up being a very slow ballad. Yes. So it's sort of that more shocking to realize that it was put into this 92 BPM too. You named it, right? Yes. So cool, right? Well, let me show you what he did to that. So we always do this. There's a sample phantom on this song. There's a gentleman who's a bass player who's name we know. So that player is Jimmy Williams, who is part of the Philly International contingent, by the way, another Philly connection. Gambling, Huff, Gambling, Huff, McFadden and Whitehead. One of my favorite baselines of all time is this gentleman. Here it is. McFadden and Whitehead ain't no stop at a snow in 1979. Jimmy Williams, give it up. Here we go. I sit down in front of Ableton with my bass strapped on and I got a beat ready. And I'm like, I'm going to create a new song. I often start with that. I often go sideways. How can I do something like that but different? It's melodic. It's grooving. It's funky. Jimmy Williams. Bernard Edwards. There's some people there. They're bass lines are just really, really complicated. And they didn't have to be that complicated, but because they are, they're so great. You just love it. It just makes a smile. It's a hook. It fulfills the purpose that your brain needs from a song, which is usually in the vocal, but no, no, this is giving you a melody, but it's groovy and it's low and sexy. The same basis on ain't no stop at us now is on Devil's Pie. That's right. So let me just remind you of what the original sounds like. Right. So it's blink and you miss it. One, two, three, four, four notes. It's not a Walt swing. You're right. Down, down, down, down. It's like 12, 8 times like an ultraviolet feel. So he took those four notes. He pitched the entire thing down one or he pitched all the individual notes down one, mapped them to his NPC and performed, by the way, part of his process is, as he's talked about, is there's a lot of trial and error. So he played around with different ideas until he got to this one, which is each of those sounds chopped up and pitched down and one of them pitched down again. So I'll just explain that to you. So here it is. That's the beginning of the pattern. And that's the fourth note, but then he pitches that fourth note down three more steps to get a fifth note out of it. Yeah. So he's playing this. And that's the baseline to Devil's Pie. That's so good. It's so genius. It's so fun. It's so genius. There's little subtle things that he left in that are different. The first three notes are down, down, down in the transposition down one step, one half step. That's B, C sharp, B. But the B's are different, is short, and the second one is longer. And he used them in the mix differently. They fulfill different functions. If you were to do, it doesn't work as well. So he did a longer one. It's just these little subtle genius. By the way, it's because of the song he sampled, it sounds like you have a live basis on. Oh, you hear the fingers, you hear the strings, you hear the slide of the strings. Yeah, no, it's especially on this note. Yeah, sliding down. But you could play those notes on a keyboard, but it wouldn't sound the same because you wouldn't feel the thread. The second bar just has these two sliding notes, one of which is pitched down in extra three. So it sounds like this, which gives it the sort of like drunken feel, which is happening across a lot of the other Dilla inspired parts of this record. I love it. While we're talking about these samples, there's this other part in the song. It's like this descending almost sounds like something out of the movie Alien. It sounds like something out of the Alien franchise. But in play, it's a little bit of that just so the audience doesn't know. Okay, here it is in the mix. This is also topped up from a sample, which I'll show you in a second. But first, here is what it sounds like in the mix isolated. Yeah, that's it. Sounds like a 1960s flying saucer landing. Bingo. Oh, no, did I guess you nailed it, my friend. It is an actual flying saucer that they recorded in 1967. Oh, okay. No, but you're not wrong. It's called Jericho Jerk. It's a song from 1967 by Pierre Henry or Henri, maybe. And Michel Colombier, and it sounds like this in its original form. Wow, it's so groovy. I'm feeling this. I even waited for this song to do something so I could place it neatly in a genre and it refuses to cooperate. It really is not cooperative at all. Five minutes of intro. It's a long ass intro. I don't know what is this. Where's it going? I thought it was going through. I thought it was going to go to a loungy place. It never went there. It never went there and we're halfway done. I'll fast forward. Let's just see where it ends up. Nope, that's a minute 40. That's that's what that is. Now it's over. It gave you genre in the last bar because the last two seconds of that song went to genre. It's all freaking awesome late 60s like sound effects and mode. Next I might throw a party with the jacket carpet and a twister set. I am putting that song on for 11 minutes. That's the one. That was fantastic. That's a really cool, weird song. It's a cool, weird song and the same dudes who did that did the song that Futurama based their theme song on. That is super cool. Premiere had that in his back pocket. Wait for the moment and this was the moment. I mean, from that weird quirky sound, which does play a huge part in why we love this song. It's one of the only things you're hearing that isn't his voice and the rhythm section. It's almost all there is in the middle. But then there's like the way he did with the bass. He took this thing that didn't have necessarily a rhythm or a tempo and he gave it to it and birthed this new song. And another thing that I think Premiere does that I absolutely love is that he'll take the smallest like word snippet. You know what I mean? Like he's done this so many times and he'll cut him into like whole sentences to be the chorus of a whole nother song. He did this famously on one of his own songs. This is a snippet from gang stars. You know my steves. Check out this chorus. Like just the king of that. You got a couple of different hip-hop icons all sampled to form a whole new sentence for the chorus of that song. And he does a little bit of this on this song on devil's pie. Listen obviously that last one is fat Joe a song called success but he's got vocal sampling in there from Rick Juan. I and I which if you don't know the song faking jacks you probably heard in some of your favorite post 1997 hip-hop songs. Go check out faking jacks by I and I by a group produced by Pete Rock among others. You got Dick Gregory in there a speech called black progress. You've got Rick Juan and Ghostface from Muganbino's The Beatles off the books this year. So many wonderful moments of him just grabbing snippets and little pieces of black 90s excellence. I love it. I love what premiere does when he scratches a vocal in. And while we're talking about vocals this wouldn't even be in the angel episode unless we talked about the amazing singer at the heart of all this wonderful miss such a great song such such poignant lyrics. We've loved to hear something. Why don't you start us off my man. Insane. So beautiful. Beautiful. The stack. The stack is all de angelo. It's him for maybe five voices at times. It's hard actually for me to extract what those harmonies are because those are those are church and gospel and jazz frankly chords the overlap of all. You can really get the gospel influence. Very close harmonies. Very interesting choices. They don't stack perfectly. And that's part of the video for at least there might be four or five at the very least I can get one or two of the voices out of there. Let's see what that sounds like. Here's the background. And then here's the lead and I'll mix them together. What's crazy about these lyrics to me is that I think I understood them one way when they came out and I understand them totally differently now when I came out it felt like hey this is messed up. We're all standing in line trying to get a piece of the devil's pie wine and women and by the way I like the women it's always a sin because it's always been singing but you know but you know like crazy you know forbidden you know sexual fancy all that stuff is in this song it actually reminds me of the depression of song walking in my shoes where he says it for a bit of food for me to eat. You mean it's vulnerable it's it's not just decrying all the sins it's awesome well but that's the thing I'm meeting defeat to a degree. I think at the time I heard it I thought it was more like these are all terrible things and like I heard the moralizing now when I hear it I sort of hear like and I hope I'm not putting something on the angelo that is not there but it's almost like he's saying these are the temptations that I personally am being faced with I hear that too and I don't want it but yet we're programmed to want it whether we're programmed at birth genetically to want more more more you know things in excess or maybe society has pushed us towards that but it definitely feels a lot more personal it's about temptation it's about yeah it's about we can't control these things that are out there and tempting us and its life and maybe it's something in the middle maybe he's both judging these things but also saying yes I too understand why people fall for the devil's I hear that too and that was like a repeated lessons as well I think the first time I heard it it felt like a moralizing thing as well yeah and not a bad message not one that I can't stand behind like you're right be be careful of things that are bad for a gospel background so you probably has pretty strong opinions about in the devil's pie it's right there in the title right there in the title but I also think that you know as you get older you start to I don't know I a part of me is just like we've gone too far on the sin thing like can we let people just be people a little bit and and and show them some and show them some grace I don't know it's a hard thing to nail it's a hard thing to nail I think that's part of the human condition is you navigate day to day and you try to make good decisions and you try to also not restrict yourself from doing things that are fun that don't hurt people but like a drink every now and then if you know what I mean like a part of me doesn't want my kids to ever have a drink but then another part of me doesn't you know that that moralizing it will work if you like if you you know put the hammer down and like never do it it tends to backfire right backfiring hammers I mix it my metaphors but you get my point I totally get your point I think I think you change as you get older yeah and it makes sense that I would hear that song one way in 98 and hear it very differently now but that's just the chorus let's let's dive into the verse one thing I wanted to point out by the way is that the rhythm of this song is consistent it's the same in the bass as it is in the vocal he's singing the same I'll play them together and you can hear how they lock in except that he's also adding this behind the beat variations from moment to moment yeah and I even hear like a churchy handclap is it snaps and handclaps but I'll play let me just play what I'm just describing so you can hear how the bass and the vocal lock together or at least they were late so in the first bar of that two-bar loop they're locked in and then they sort of go call in response so there's an interplay between the two it's a 16-duh duh duh duh duh duh duh oney and I was in the three end of foury and a oney and a two and a three duh duh and again it swung it's behind the beat it's inconsistent but that's kind of the world we're living in rhythmically which helps I think reinforce the simplicity of that motif duh duh duh is the whole song yeah really hearing that across the five minutes which is why by the end of it it's just embedded in your reign you've heard it in the vocals you've heard it in the bass okay we just say something about those lyrics because I I almost got chills just hearing it in his own voice because it's more like a speech and less like a song so some of that stuff lands harder yeah sometimes he says who am I to justify all the evil in our eyes when I myself feel the high from all that I despise like so in other words it's hard just like what we were just talking about like we know the pleasant buzz you can get off of a great glass of wine but we don't necessarily want our children drinking one right so it's just like and he's on a whole different level he's an international superstar lord knows what he's been offered and he's saying like you know who am I to judge when I felt that high this is the cognitive distance especially of a like of a deep thinker who sort of self-aware and can put into his art this moment of decision paralysis like I don't want to do it but I kind of do I know I shouldn't but I still kind of want to I know what it's like and I know I shouldn't yes but I want to anyway yes and one other thing I just got to point out like to me I love hearing his voice when he's talking like this because it's still just even the way he's delivering the thing is sort of rhythmic and I was thinking like at 92 BPMs it's just this weird DJ thing like I've always I've prints let's go crazy the same way I always hear in the back of my mind like a church clap so it's like it's just that it's that back clap you know No, that clap on my back. Double time. You did double time. Double time. time. Yes. I heard it just now when I've never thought about that in relationship to this song. Now Blake, take us to the bridge. You want to talk gospel? I got some gospel for you, my friend. Listen to that all day. A gospel choir of just the Angelo. Yes. I don't know. Six or seven notes in there, at least maybe even more. Couldn't isolate them all, but here's one or two. And here's one of the leads taken out. Apparently when he did his vocals, he was alone. Questlove talks about he was just wanted to be secluded. So most of Voodoo was him just taking hours. You know, once the track was done, it would take hours for him to come up with the stack and be happy with all the takes and all the parts for each of those individual notes that he would be singing this. He was the choir of one on this tune on the whole record. Just like Jimmy, Jimmy liked to be isolated. He thought he did not have a great voice. At the same place 30 years earlier, he was doing the same thing in the same exact studio. Yeah, it'd been almost 30 years. Wow, that's crazy. Please a little bit of the vocal outro out there. Get down. I don't think he said anything there. So good. I can't help but take my head. I know we were all divided with my hair. There was one line in there. It almost sounded like it was most deaf. And it occurs to me that most was almost like a flip side of this coin because the angel was like this R&B singer who was coming with like hip-hop influences and vibes. Meanwhile, most deaf was most definitely a rapper, but he was one of the first rappers. I remember who we were like, man, that dude, he's singing all these hooks. You know what he's saying for the Bush babies. He was singing on his own songs like most deaf, also recording it roughly the same time. I didn't draw these lines back then, but now I'm seeing the connections that are going on. There was just something in the late 90s where people were trying to do something different. And again, I think it's in large part due to the response of the ubiquity of bad boy records and all the and the music they were putting out at the time. I always understood where most deaf was a response to that. I understand more than ever the dance was a response to that too. Interesting. Yeah, I see that there. Also, you can really hear his vocals in that outro. You can really hear the influence of the blues. And I love this one, DeAngelo quote. DeAngelo said quote, "I would say the spirit of the vocals is more like a chain gang or like a feel of the slaves and the feel picking whatever the f*ck master had us picking." That's what we'd be singing when we were picking in the hot f*cking sun. There's like that scene in centers where they show the chain gang. And when you should know that that's sort of what's in his head when he's singing this, it kind of makes a lot of sense. I'm so glad you mentioned that because like, first of all, it wouldn't be one song in these past few months without us bringing up the blues and blue notes and tritones. Guess what? There's a tritone in the song which I found in this strange way because the vocal, this is in G major this song, but the bass line is not in G major. It's in G-Lidian. It's a mode. It just means that one note is different. Okay. So the bass is in a different key, technically, a different mode. Then the vocals, it's very strange. I'll just explain what that means briefly. The notes that he's playing that he's singing. Now, of course, he's harmonizing this. So that's oversimplification. It's G major, but the bass line is. Didn't that note sound strange when I just played it for you? Yeah. The C sharp, it's not in the G major. It's a very strange juxtaposition because there's a C and a C sharp. Those two notes exist at the same time sometime and that's a tritone. In other words, in the G, in G major, that's the tritone note. So there's a tritone in the song. It's the blues, you were just. I'm not. Shows up there. Can I just say I love that you found that? And I'm not surprised because the very first time I heard this, every time I've heard this song, there's always something a little bit. I want to use the phrase in a good way off about it. Yes, off is the word. Sonically off, and to know that it's intentional, just makes me realize the genius of D&D. Yeah, listen back to that bass line on its own. It's done, done, done. That one half step higher is like, that's a little bit of the strangest. There's a little wobbly. There's some strangest. In the rhythm that we've been discussing with the Dilla time. But there's also some strangeness in that one choice of one half step that is contrary in a way, but doesn't cause problems in the consciousness. In fact, it's called devil's pie. To the key of the vocal. You're supposed to feel a little inert. You know what I mean in that? That tritone is helping us feel inert. Exactly. So now that we have heard the song, how do the splits on devil's pie breakdown? The splits are 75% Michael DeAngelo Archer, 25% Chris E. Martin, aka DJ Premier. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We know that this song came out in 1998, two years ahead of voodoo's release. And it kind of went under the radar to people outside of the hip-hop community. My theory is that it was just too different from what DeAngelo had been doing earlier on Brown Sugar. And I will say it was way darker than hip-hop. And R&B at the time, as we said so many times, this is like the height of like bad boy and puffy on top of the whole world. Although I will point out this song did get a feature in the hype way. I'm called classic movie, belly. And hype wave is like the guy who in part invented some of that shiny suit aesthetic. That is, but like he's he's savvy enough to know, hey, I'm going to work with DeAngelo too and throw this into my movie, belly. Let's play a clip from the movie, belly. Check this out. Belly, really underrated movie. Has quite the interesting ending, but that's something for another podcast. Don't be a spoiler, man. Yeah, no spoilers. Watch belly and then find me in the DM. So we'll talk about it. So like we said, devil spy was recorded quite well in advance of voodoo coming out. When voodoo came out, they believed that the single was going to be left and right, which featured methaman and red man. But they were late and delivering it to MTV. And MTV said, we ain't showing this video. And it looked like that was going to be the end of, you know, sort of DeAngelo being this guy who always gets his videos played. Long behold, they filmed the video for untied on how does it feel. They start showing it at like key parties in and around New York. It's the talk of the town before things were able to go viral. And it's pretty soon, MTV is basically forced to start showing this BT, all these channels start showing it. And it becomes sort of a hit video at the end of sort of like the music video era. It was like a hit music video. And it turned DeAngelo into quite the sex symbol. A sex symbol that was a reluctant sex symbol. Something he never wanted to be. He struggled with that a lot, yeah. For those in your car, you will hear untitled. And for those at your laptops, here's a little treat for you. A visual treat here is untitled. I just want to be your man. I will say ever since I saw that video, I've been very self-conscious about the V at the bottom of my ways. A lot of people learn that that existed for some humans, because I didn't know. And Brad Pitt, if I could be so cut that you could have a V. I did not know you could have before there were six pack abs, there was that as an expression that was in the common parlance. After this video gave all of his body issues. DeAngelo said that he couldn't perform anymore without women. Basically being like, take your shirt off at every performance for artists as thoughtful as intentional as DeAngelo. This was quite demoralizing. And after the success of the untitled video, he kind of became a bit of a recluse. And there was some substance abuse. But thankfully, that was not the end of the DeAngelo story. In 2014, he blessed us with another incredible album, Black Messiah. So many good songs on Black Messiah. Here's one of my favorites. Let's listen to a bit of charade. I mean, he's gone back to what I think served him so well on Voodoo. He's incorporating like sort of like the jam aesthetic into his gospel and his, you know, love of prints. Guitar and sitar sound in the mix. And he's playing guitar. I think he's spent more time after Voodoo kind of learning guitar and getting that deeper into that instrument. So, Tiel, what do you think the legacy of DeAngelo and Devil's Pie is? I think the legacy of DeAngelo is going to be celebrated for a long time. Not only is he one of the great singers with that gospel-y, bluesy, you know, voice of his, but he's also, you know, he's also just this guy who can play so many different instruments. And, you know, to see his growth from Brown Sugar to Voodoo, well, he didn't get there overnight clearly. You know, there are years in between. But right there in the middle of it is Devil's Pie. And I think that that in some ways encapsulates his love of R&B and hip hop into something that doesn't feel retro. It feels new. It felt new. I think that's why we as people who talk about music embrace the term neo-soul because it's got the neo in there. Moving away from something that feels fake, you know, like, like, pleather into something that feels authentic and real. And I think that it came along at a great time. And I think that artists for generations to come will be inspired by him. I totally agree. I feel like DeAngelo has really risen. Part of obviously, his not being in the public eye for so many years, I think hasn't tarnished his reputation, maybe it's enhanced it. But unfortunately, it has meant he's on the tear with prints. He's on the tear with all the other Yoda's, right? He really is up there with the George Clinton's and the slides. And maybe unfortunately, like, slide, he did have this moment of sort of retreating from the public spotlight for reasons. But he has this incredible body of work, of music. And again, I really do think he is a bit in this mount rush more of iconic musicians. And the fact that we lost him so soon is such a tragedy, only three full albums. He could have grown into, he could have been Harvey Hancock. There's a reason to believe he might not have had another 30, 40 years of music making. And evolution, perhaps at the same pace of, you know, album every couple of decades. Sure. But incredible music, nevertheless. I love that you say he's now one of the Yoda's. He's one of his Yoda's. And now he is one of the Yoda's. He's ascended to that place. And now he's got like the the force goes, you know, shined around him. No, seriously. I mean, like to me, if he loves Star Wars and Star Trek as much as me, like you're getting those chills right now, because you're just like, you know, he is Obi-Wan. He did it. And we love him for it. All right, one song nation is time for one genre. Our friends at Discox challenged us to do a deep dive into a subgenre and share a few records that we think are essential listening. And just a reminder, when we talk about genre on the show, we talk about it very broadly. We recognize that there are poorest borders and overlap in all kinds of genres. We don't want to restrict you or restrict your language by insisting something has to only be one genre at a time. That's right. That's not how genre works. It's just so we can talk about music that has shared sensibilities. Precisely right. All right. So today, we're talking about dub reggae, a music that evolved in the 1970s in Jamaica. If you haven't already listened to it, please listen to our sister Nancy and Don Penn episodes, because we do some really good conversations about this genre. Can I just say real quick, please? That as a hip hop DJ, I thought dub just meant instrumental because often you would buy hip hop 12 inches and then it would just say dub mix. And that was just a version without the rap. But it's so much deeper than that. What can you tell us about dub reggae? Well, I definitely go back to listen to those, takes two hours. So listen to those two one hour long episodes, sister Nancy and Don Penn for the full explanation. But in a nutshell, yes, it was this discovery that you could take songs and mute sections of them in the multi tracks. And then start to be creative about like throwing a bit, a fragment of a vocal into the delay. This creativity birthed an entire movement in the 70s, which we kind of take for granted now, as the basis of all remixing comes out of dub and comes out of Jamaica and comes out of this creative explosion in the 70s. It was one of the funny things about the term mashup that was like so popular in 2000. I was like, yeah, in the hip hop community in the 90s, we always had like a Nakapella that we throw over somebody else's instrumental. I mean, technically that is a mashup. We just didn't call it that. We're using just merited ideas from different songs has been in the ether for a half century at this point. Yeah. So now what is your selection for today's dub? Oh my god. This was such a Sophie's choice times 12 guys. He was sweating. This is my obsession is dub. I have my my discogs, you know, collection of dub is for the last four years disgusting. A lot of a lot of money. The number one record, the number one purchase on discogs I should say is a dub record. So the record is called tribesmen assault, but the band is roots underground. This one cost me about a hundred bucks worth every penny just for this first song high times. My god, when I every Friday night, I sit on the couch with the bass and I put this song on the turntable and I play the bass line to this 10 times in a row. That is how I ease into the weekend. One of the greatest dog tracks of all time. Can I ask you real quick? Like, is that song available? Like on MP3? Like, could I listen to it? Yes, it's on Spotify. Actually, yeah, you can go listen to the song and any platform. But nothing sounds as good as like when you've got like I think more than more more than some genres, the dub genre just sounds better when there's a needle on a record. I think so. It really benefits from the tactile nature and the sounds and yeah, like all of the dust in the mind. The bass just sounds a little bit more low. Absolutely. Listen, I'm gonna really quickly go through these. That's my number one. My number two is and this is to get some variety too. Horus Andy. These are all instrumentals on the Trips Minnesota record. I trust this. So I'm immediately thinking I got to get this. This is one of the all-time greats dance hall style by Horus Andy. Another wacky. These are both on wackies, which is bull wackies, which is a label that actually came out of Long Island. Guys from Jamaica that moved to Long Island to make dub reggae and incredible, incredible productions really dry. It's very wooting actually. It's very dark and gritty production sound. Yeah. What makes Horus Andy's music stand out? His voice is so distinctive. You've heard it on massive attack. He's the voice on at least three massive attack songs. Oh, very cool. I thought I'd see his name before. But now you're saying this dub that you have has vocals. This one has the classic thing where they take the vocal version and then on the flip of the 45, they would have dubbed it out. But now they make this on the record version. You get both literally spliced together. Sometimes it'll be one song, but you'll kind of hear where the vocal ends and there's this tiny space before they've spliced in very charmingly and perfectly the dub version. So they're all seven minute long songs. And I'll do one more because I know we've got to move on. I could do a whole podcast about dub records. I got to mention my guy, Lee Scratch Perry. I have 50 Lee Scratch Perry records. It was so hard to choose the number one. But this is it. Black art in debuff. You've got to start somewhere. I literally, when I'm awake at three in the morning and I can't fall asleep, I put this on and it soothes my brain. And by the way, Bascad artwork if I'm not mistaken. This is actually the wall of his studio, if you can believe it. And you're not wrong to connect that they visually look similar. But on the wall of the black arc in Jamaica before he burned it down, he just had all of these strange ruins and words and letters and symbols. But the black arc in question in the title of this record comes from Lee Scratch Perry's studio that he made the some of the greatest music ever made, including the Congo's record. That's very famous. And then he burned it down. What about you, Deala? What is your dub pick? Oh, mine easily. Studio one dubbed the original right around the world today. I think you own this one too. Oh my god. That's another expensive Discox purchase. I know. Listen, first off, can I just say Soul Jazz records sort of across many genres. Totally. Yes. Excellent. Incredible curation. So we can talk about Brazilian funk. We can talk about like weird like New York stuff on future episodes. But this one, it's basically dub versions of songs that had been put out in Jamaica in the 19s studio one tunes studio one to studio one label. And I would just say like this one, I think you can find an MP3 form if you can't just go out and just listen to it. It was a good introduction for me to the genre just because I didn't know as much as you. I didn't come up with it the way that you did. But man, really good, really good song select. I'm drunk and sailor version outstanding. Check that one out in particular. Man, I'm so glad you recommended this one to me. Thank you. My pleasure. So those are our one genre picks. Check out our list on discogs.com. And we know there are so many more dub reg a gems out there. So please let us know some of your favorites in the comments. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram @DialoDIALLO. It's just six letters at Diallo or on TikTok @DialoRiddle. That's 12 letters. I know that's a lot, but it's all I could get. And you can find me on Instagram @LUXXURY and on TikTok @LuxuryXX. And if you have a radio, check out my new radio show every Friday night at 10 p.m. on KCRW. And you can follow our podcasts on Instagram and TikTok at @OneSongPodcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of OneSong on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for OneSongPodcast. We would love it if you'd like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the OneSong Spotify playlist for all the songs we've discussed on our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you made it this far, you're officially part of the OneSong Nation, salute. Good job. Show us some love, good as five stars, leave a review, and send this episode to a fellow music nerd. It really helps keep the show going. Proud nerd. We're all proud nerds. Oh, there's one shaman nerd too. Luxury helped me in this thing. I'm producer DJ Songwriter and musicologist Luxury. And I'm after writer-director and sometimes DJ DialoRiddle. And this is OneSong we will see you next time. This episode was produced by Melissa Dwayneas. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Vimbo, mixing by Michael Harmon and engineering by Eric Hicks, Productions Supervision by Rizok Puykin, Additional Production Support from Zay Taylor. This show is executed produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wilde, and Leslie Guam.