Deee-Lite's "Groove Is In The Heart"

Hey, One Song Nation. Today, we're bringing back one of our all-time favorite episodes. It's a deep dive into a track that can still light up a dance floor. We're talking D-Lights. Groove is in the heart. That's right, Diallo. This song is a veritable musical potpourri of genre-spanning samples that even includes a surprising snippet from a 60s TV-themed song. This conversation was a D-Light. You don't want to miss it. Let's get into it. One, two, one, two, three, four. Yeah, dig. Sing it, baby. I couldn't part with another. No, I couldn't part with another. Groove is in the heartbeat. That's what I'm talking about, baby. Oh my gosh, that was amazing. I mean, we. I don't think. I think that was perfect. I think it's indistinguishable from the actual recording. You know, Usher needed like seven weeks. To prepare for the Super Bowl. Not us. Not us. Not us. We just came in and we made magic happen. We nailed it cold. All right, I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter Luxury, a.k.a. the guy who talks about interpolation on the internet. And whispers about it, too. And this is one song. Today, we're talking about a postmodern, transcendent, genre-bending smash hit. It's a song built on a bedrock of samples from disco records, funk, jazz, exotica, a whole potpourri of different sources. My parents didn't let me go in the exotica section. I was behind a curtain, like a beaded curtain. Kids weren't allowed back there. It's not just the samples that are all over the map. So was the band. They drew on their influences from Asia, Europe, and East Village. And don't forget Queens. The hip-hop in the song comes via Queens. This song features cameos from a hip-hop luminary and a funk icon. It was ranked by Pitchfork and VH1 as one of the best songs of the '90s. It's often called out as one of the decade's best party tunes. Rolling Stone, they can't be wrong. They listed it as one of the 500 best songs of all time. And as a DJ who's done more weddings than I can count. It's still a feel-good classic that gets the over-40s to the dance floor. That's right. You're listening to one song, the Atlantic-rated, the 23rd best podcast in the world. I will stop milking that. No, no, no. We're number 23 like Jordan. Let's keep milking. I'm enjoying milking that. And the song we're talking about today. is D-Light's "Groove is in the Heart." Dig. Luxury, I know you have a lot of personal history with this song. Oh my God. This is absolutely, this is such a key song for me. I believe it. Can't wait to talk about it. I can't wait to talk about it. It's released in the summer of 1990 and it's easily the song of the summer. This song went number one in several countries and ruled the Billboard dance chart. How did you first hear this song and what's going on in your life back then? I mean, this song came out when I was just starting my freshman year of college. I'm in Washington, DC. I'm the music director. I was the music director at my school or working at the radio station, at least. This is relative because- Music director at the school? I was, I think, going to soon be the music director, but I was at the radio station. The point of which is we get all these free records. So I got the World Click record. That's D-Light's debut album. I actually got it like very early on in the school year. And while this was happening, we were also, all me and my friends were going to Trax, which is this legendary gay nightclub just outside of DC. So my experience coming into college in this moment was like house music was starting to happen and was starting to be a thing that I was exposed to. And it was also starting to be on the pop charts with D-Light's "Groove is in the Heart." Madonna's "Vogue" is also in the same year. So this is an interesting moment where there's a crossover happening, basically. Absolutely. But I'm also kind of in the trenches a little bit where in retrospect, it's kind of so cool that I was, I got to be there because at the time, like we'd see this guy named Kevin, Kevin Avianz, and everyone would be like all starstruck about him. And he sort of turned into a legendary, like, RuPaul. Like. Drag icon in the later years. And in fact, he put out a record, I will say the name of it, if we have to bleep it out, so be it. But he put out the record "Cunty," which Beyonce sampled on Renaissance. Well, which song was that? The song is "Pure Honey." Yeah, I love that song. So this person was just there at this club that we would go to, and we would sort of worship him from afar. All this to say that, like, this was a moment for me where electronic music was itself in the world beginning to happen in dance music in this new way. Yeah. With house music being, starting to filter out from its origins in Chicago. And it hit my ears, it hit the radio's ears, it hit Madonna's ears, so it's all kind of like crossing over. Everybody, I feel like everybody was really into this, into this song. And look, you know, like, admittedly, I'm in junior high, I think, when this song comes out. And so my only interaction with it was really through MTV, but I remember the second I saw it, it just seemed like this really cool world. Right, that video is so amazing. The video is iconic. It's iconic, yeah. If you, if you remember it at the time. If you remember it at the time and you haven't thought about it in a while, go back and look at that video, you will remember things that you have totally not thought about in 30 and 40, very long time. But also rewatching it, I'd forgotten about how, like, in Zoolander, when they do the, like, Frankie's Hollywood, like, hypnotism dance, it's the same thing, it's the round thing behind them, it's the little heads popping up. The little heads popping in. And I mean, like, I will say the same thing. I feel like, you know, for me, again, digesting this as a young teenager, delight. I don't know, I don't know if you've heard of it, but, like, B-52s were doing Love Shack around this time, like, there was so much, like, sort of, like, daisy, daisy hippie, like, 60s iconography going on. It's that iconography, but there's also, like, this sort of retro and kitsch factor where there's sort of 70s and 60s elements that are coming into the music, but with, like, an ironic wink. You know, this is an era, like, there kind of wasn't, like, irony didn't really exist until, of course, it existed, but, like, as a mass phenomenon, like, people were pretty, like, on the nose in the music. And then you kind of get this sort of, maybe Dave Letterman starts to bring irony to the masses. I'm not really sure what had happened. But by the time we get to the B-52s, Love Shack, and delight groove is in the heart, it's like, you can, you can kind of read, you're kind of able to read that there's a little bit of humor happening with the choice of this, like, funky bass line from disco music, which also sounds cool. So you can kind of have your cake and eat too. Well, that's the thing is, like I said earlier, it's a postmodern song. It's got, it's got a disco sample. It's got the, you know, the. I won't jump the gun here, but it's got the jazz sample, let's say, from the soundtrack to the movie Blow Up from the 60s. And again, as a kid, just digesting this video, like, I had never, I didn't know who Boosie Collins was. Right. I was like, who's this weird old black guy with the glasses? By the way, he was probably, like, in his 30s then. But to me, he seemed like he was 100 years old. Right, right, right. You know, I knew Q-Tip because I was, like, you know, into hip hop. I knew Tribe Called Quest. But I was like, who's the lady in the outfit doing the seductive dance moves? And who are these? Quirky guys who look like they work at a record store in Atlanta's, you know, Little Five Point. Shout out to Wax and Facts. I used to go there all the time and see people who, like, look like these. It was like a door opening to a whole other world. It was like an art school had exploded onto an MTV video. It was crazy. Well said. I just, I think, by the way, Austin Powers hasn't come out yet. So I feel like there was just a lot of, like, 60s retro. I was also a big Pee Wee Herman fan. Yeah. And a lot of the stuff in Pee Wee's Playhouse. Oh, that's another good example. You're right. Yeah. It looked like it was out of a. That's another kitsch getting the mainstream example. Great example. It looked like B-52s and D-Lite. And Devo had sort of been doing it, too. It'd been, not to, Irony wasn't invented, but certainly there were lots of, there's an underground kind of cultural, counterculture, alt-culture thing that was starting to bubble into the mainstream. Absolutely. Early 80s, maybe Whippet, you can draw a straight line from Whippet through the B-52s to D-Lite. And they're kind of all of a piece of sort of subversive culture, kind of questioning, but also celebrating American pop trash. You know what I mean? All of these things that came before. And I think this goes towards why we chose this song. One thing we always do on the show is we try to bring to light why these songs we cover matter. What makes them part of this musical Smithsonian we're building. I love that. That's great. I would love to visit the musical Smithsonian. We are the musical Smithsonian. We're the curators of the musical Smithsonian. That's great. Yeah. So just to sort of summarize a little what we've been talking about, we were talking about how the band D-Lite, and we'll talk a little bit about the individuals, how they bring their own experiences literally into the music. So their choice of. The choice of records that they sample and the choice of sounds that they're making comes a lot from their backgrounds. But this is really interesting because it's in this moment where we've just been having big sampling records are happening. I talk about big sampling records all the time because there's this tiny moment where you've got sort of in '88, '80, '91, it's when hip hop has reached kind of an apex as an art form. It's gotten to this point where part of the art is the collage of samples. Sure. So you have Public Enemy, Nation of Millions. The Bomb Squad. Yeah. Some of those songs have like 200 samples. Yeah. You've got Three Feet High and Rising by Dayless Soul. Yeah. You've got Paul's Boutique by Beastie Boys. And it's interesting as I was listening back to this record, I realized you sort of add this to that group because World Click by D-Lite, in particular this song, Groove Is in the Heart has at least 11 samples that I was able to track. Yeah. So that's not something you could really do anymore. This was a moment where the lawsuits basically had not started to hit. I feel like even like D-Lite theme, that song sounds like a hip hop record of the period, with all the looping. There's a really interesting connection, I think, between hip hop, which literalizes itself in this song, right? Yeah. later when we have our guest, our guest 16 bars, and we'll talk about Q-Tip in a minute. So I think it's really interesting to make that connection. It's also interesting because in this moment, you know, sometimes we talk about how Daft Punk's pyramid at Coachella in 2006, it was a breakthrough moment culturally because that generation, a certain generation, there had been kind of a gap between the disco demolition in 1980 and 2006, where dance music was a little underground, but it actually popped its head up a couple of times in between. Famously, the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy a few years later. Fatboy Slim. But in 1990, dance music also popped its head up for a minute with this song. And it's easy to kind of forget that there is a post-disco demolition, disco sucks, America music house and disco and everything underground. And they are, but every now and then they pop their head up for a huge, massive global smash like this song. Absolutely. I mean, I think about like Heavy D came out around this period with Now That We Found Love, which is basically a house trap. Right. And him rapping, Hey! Hey, you! What we gonna do? You know, like there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there are a lot of hip hop artists jumping onto tracks and that made them edgy. I'm remembering US3 with Cantaloupe and stuff like that. We're not going to talk about US3. One of my most favorite songs of all time. I know. Funky, funky. Everybody's got an opinion on that song. I think the Blue Note guys really liked it. It was like hip hop that these, you know, old jazz musicians on Blue Note could really get down with. But we say all that just to say that like, this is the sound of early nineties, New York. An early nineties dance. In fact, I was reading some of the contemporary reviews of this song and they call it a house song, which I always considered it more of a disco song, you know, when it came out then. But because it has like a house BPM, it was considered, you know, by some of these, you know, journalists. And so much of that Proto House is just a disco sample with an 808. This is not an 808 drum machine necessarily. I'm actually not sure what, no, I take it back. I know that there are no drum machines in this song. So it is technically. Not a house music track, maybe just because there's no 808 or 909 in the mix. So it's interesting you say that. But in the UK, it was a double A side single, and the other side was What Is Love, which sounds like an amazing house record. That is still a monster. Sounds like 2024. It could be like, contemporary. In fact, when we're done here, let's go back to your place and put some 909s and 808s under it. Honestly, the whole record. I mean, I have a feeling we might have to touch on the one hit wonder nature of how this song and this band is perceived. But frankly, World Click still stands the test of time as a great album. I think we should talk about whether they're a one hit wonder a little later in the show. OK, so one thing about this song is that I think everyone of a certain age knows it. But I guess most people know far less about the band. Talk us through it. Who are D-Lite, spelled with three E's, luxury, spelled with two X's. So D-Lite are a band that form in New York. The nucleus is Lady Miss Keir, Keir Kirby, who's-- I'm glad you told me how to pronounce her name, because I was confused. I was scared, too. Keir, it's Keir. Yeah, Lady Miss Keir, Keir Kirby, from Ohio. She meets-- it's 1982, and she meets a DJ, DJ Dimitri Brill, who's from Ukraine, but who moved to the US when he was a teenager. Yeah, and I thought he was the DJ in the band. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. The two of them really form the songwriting nucleus of the band. And it kind of happens accidentally, because Dimitri is a DJ. He's on the scene. He's like a resident at all the big, hot clubs at the moment. In New York. In New York, yeah. This is all in New York. Early '80s. Early '80s New York City. And so Lady Miss Keir, she comes to be known later. She's a fashion designer and a textile designer. And she's not a musician at all, but they start dating. And one night, they take LSD, and she starts singing. And the next day, Dimitri's like, you have a good voice. We should write some music. And that's the beginning of the two of them starting to write songs together, was this sort of accidental LSD experience of vocal discovery. Oh, so that's interesting. So many groups, this group sort of grew out of a couple. Yeah. Grew out of a couple. Grew out of this accidental LSD experience. Which also explains the video. I feel like watching that video again, it's a trip. It's so trippy. It's a trip. It's so trippy. It's very psychedelic. They're bringing all that '70s kind of cliche stuff back. Again, with a wink. You know, the sort of like, oh my god, what do you call the lamp? The lava lamp. Like all that lava lamp graphics. Like in the '70s, have you ever watched the "Veiled Underground?" There's always like a lava lamp video thing going on behind them. Might be one of my kids' room. They bring all that back with a wink and a nod. Yeah, absolutely. Another kind of interesting accident that leads to there starting to be a band is, you know, Lady Miskir tells this story about it. She says, in 1986, I found $500 in the back of a cab and bought my first sampler. And that allowed her-- Oh, that is the best. That's so great. And as a non-musician-- and by the way, this is in 1986. She had the wherewithal to think, I want to make music, but I'm not a musician. $500 in a cab in 1980s. First off-- And spent it on a sampler. There was probably tons of residue on the $500. Let's slow the story down. Let's talk about the $500 in the cab. I want to know about this $500. What would you do? If you find $500 in a cab in 1986? I don't know, but I think someone got killed when they showed up and they didn't have that $500. It's true. Can I just say real quick, super short anecdote. One time, Bashir and I, my writing partner Bashir and I, went to a nightclub. And as I walked-- and we were like in our 20s and flat broke. As I walked across the dance floor, I saw some money and I just picked it up. And I counted it, and it was $260. All in 20s. Can you-- I felt like a Rockefeller. Like, I can't tell you how many jams that got me out of like-- it was just like a magic-- it was like Mario when he finds a coin. Like, but one of the bricks with lots of coins. Wait, when you find this money, are you like looking around? Or are you like worried someone's going to think you stole it? Dude, I put that in my pocket so fast. I went-- actually, it's a good point. I went to the bar where Bashir was. I was like, dude, we got to get out of here. I was like, we got to go. He's like, what happened? I was like, I'll explain later. No, no. I was like, but we just came up. We were roommates at the time, so we ate like kings. Sizzler. We're going to the Sizzler tonight. Steak, seafood, and salad. Damn, what a combo. Surf and turf. I'm sorry, this is pointless. Let's get back to, she finds $500 in the back of a cab. So she finds this money in the back of a cab. She buys her first sampler. And again, the wherewithal to think, I'm not a musician, but I want to make music. In 1986, to know to buy a sampler and that you can piece together songs from that. Because it's kind of happening in the world for the first time. Like, now we take for granted, ah, you can piece together some samples. Some loops, et cetera. Are you going to tell me that she and he co-produced this? Because I thought he produced it. And so she was a co-producer. So it's cool, because the name of-- they formed an entity, like a production entity, called Sampledelic Productions. If you look at the record, it's produced by D-Lite, Sampledelic Productions. It's just the two of them. That all tracks. And the third person they brought in was DJ Toa Tei, who's-- Who I love and have followed for years. We'll talk about that a little bit. His solo work. It's great, too. He's amazing. He comes into the picture. And what he brings to the table is his record collection as a DJ and as a collector of these more esoteric records. He's a Japanese-Korean-born DJ who moved to New York and moves to the United States. They all meet on the club scene in the late '80s. And he becomes the third and the missing piece for the band. He had just gotten to town. I love that story. And immediately, he's on, like, the hottest song in the world. And makes a massive contribution, because-- So the story of "Groove" is in the heart as a song. Lady Miss Keir says that she'd actually already had the lyrics written separately. And then DJ Dimitri Brill was one of his favorite songs to play when he was a DJ. And not to jump the gun a little bit on the stems, but because the stories are merged, the stems are mostly samples outside of the vocals. Here is the song that he would love to play as a DJ in his DJ sets. This song is Herbie Hancock, "Bring Down the Birds" from the Blow Up soundtrack, if you've seen the movie. Michelangelo Antonioni. So '60s. So go, go. It's a hot tune on its own. I mean, you can understand. But it's so cool that he's playing this, right? Think about the tempo and the sound. Like, that's unusual. That's a cool party. If you can play this and the people don't throw eggs at you, as we know, everybody goes to the club with eggs in their pocket, right? It's so fast. It's like a '60s go-go jam. I love that. 1966. I love that. That tells me a lot about the parties that he was probably DJing. Yeah, yeah, very eclectic. Also, we talk a lot on this show about Quincy Jones and the path that his career took. I don't think enough is said about Herbie Hancock. I mean, like, he goes from that era Herbie Hancock to, like, the jazz fusion, Herbie Hancock that gets sampled more often in hip hop, to, like, Rocket, which was the first time my ears ever heard scratching. Me too. Yeah. So I mean, like, you know, at some point, we got to give Herbie his flowers. Oh, my god. Herbie is crucial. He's also crucial to the song, too, because not only-- he's actually the only credited songwriter outside of the band and Q-tip for his rap for his 16 bars later on. That's viably. And he's also got two samples in the song, because he's sampled as Herbie Hancock, but one of his other entities, the Head Hunters, also appears as one of the samples used in the song. Oh, I can't wait to hear that. So we'll get into all the samples. I can't wait to hear that. Rich with samples. We'll get into that in just a minute. To finish the story of how the band meets, so we've got the three of them. They come up with this name, which, you know, clearly, has some connection to-- I haven't heard them tell the story about, like, that they took it from D-Lite Records, which was Kool and the Gang's label. Oh, that's right. I hadn't heard about that connection. But some connection, like, you know, that's-- if you ever get an old Kool and the Gang record-- Did they spell it with three E's, too? It's with two E's, but it's D-E dash light, L-I-T-E. Ah, it's very similar. There's probably a connection there. But there's also the Cole Porter song. What if somebody was like, for that label, was like, oh, we've got a lawsuit. Going to get some of that groove of the heart money. Yay. They also probably were connected to the Cole Porter song, "It's D-Lovely." You know, there's the song where-- there's another song on the record she says-- That was the song that starts off. Right. you're right it's in the song yeah how do you say do you love me how do you say yeah all right well after the break we're gonna play some of the samples from groove is in the heart and i guarantee you this song has some samples that are absolute chef's kiss you have not heard them before we're gonna play them stay tuned luxury i don't know how the current economy is treating you but i'll say for me and my family we're really trying to spend our money in a way that's smart and recently we did some digging and discovered a whole investment account that we had forgotten was there we left money on the table just for not being aware but now we're getting smart feel organized and confident in your finances with monarch money an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or phone and right now just for our listeners monarch is offering 50 off your first year i mean it when you work in the arts a lot of times 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money.com with code one song welcome back to one song so this song is almost entirely built on samples i know that there's some original vocals that were applied but like this isn't a case where like the band got in the studio and even really supplied like a bass line or like a guitar there like explain to us like how unusual this song is well you know we talked a little bit before about the era of sampling sampling is happening on the hip-hop side it's also been happening to be fair it's happening on the hip-hop side it's happening on the hip-hop side it's happening on the hip-hop side it's happening a big part of their lineage is using you know reusing recorded material and adding you know drum machines and vocals to that they've done that in this song so they're definitely carrying on the tradition of dance music in the post-disco era sort of house that's kind of what house music starts to do that's new and different is add 909s and drum machines to loops and vocals so they've done all that but actually there isn't even the drum machine that's crazy so unusual they just purely they literally made a collage of sound yeah with pre-recorded material and even when you've got the bomb squad or dj premiere it's like they are generally adding something of like yeah just like always something in addition to the samples not always but frequently enough that it's still there's always i can't think of too many hip-hop what's funny is every now and then like ghostface killer uh will literally just rap over the song like he'll leave the vocals in and everything yeah that can be put his vocals over it but that's essentially what they did here like there's no to be clear there's no band session of delight in the recording music that they're playing although on stage later on and dimitri is a performer and you mentioned the song he was in a band before he was in many bands before they actually they all part of the backstory is that they were all failing and lady miss keir felt bad for him and so like they were the the whole origin of the band was a little bit like you know trying to help him have his band fantasy come to life and live he does sometimes early footage of the band actually they would be he would be playing guitar and sometimes he plays keyboards um but for this song none of that's true that's happening they didn't add any keyboards any any live instrumentation except and we'll get to this in a minute there are some live horns and they're not just any horn players oh yes special horn players there's a story there we'll get to that but you have some samples you want to play for us so what do you want to play for us first all right so let's start with that drum beat this is a sample from a song by vernon birch from 1979 it's called get up that's what it sounds like there's a little drum break and they sample the drum break that's in classic hip-hop slash dance music tradition it's all about the break you find a bar where there's nothing else happening but b and you grab that and you grab it do me a favor play this song from the beginning though and that is freaking sick jam bro that's what 1979 sounds like you know i did a deep dive on this uh with the help of my my my friend on the inside who i mentioned on a they sometimes paid a hundred bucks to the record label like on paul's boutique a lot of these big sampling records when they didn't just try and get away with it which history does there's no record of which samples they did that on they would often pay a pretty small sum because this was the early days of sampling yeah nobody knew how much to charge for this you know what it really depended and um sometimes they just try to get away with it on the publishing side i can tell you definitively that the only sample that was cleared on the publishing side was the herbie was the herbie hancock one which which forms the basis that's the only sample that was cleared on that main baseline that runs through the entire song i do have a question um on the issue of sampling which is that you know when you go back and you listen to the version of ready to die by the notorious big on itunes they've removed a lot of the parliament sample right all of it but paul's boutique which you could argue samples even probably more problematic stuff seems to be generally intact is it not it's if i will if i go out and buy the cd of paul's boutique will it sound different i mean no paul's boutique won't sound different day less holes three feet high and rising oh drastically different does i know about very different yes right so i just wonder what what what was in the beastie boys's camp how how were they able to clear all that stuff for perpetuity with so many other people you know i've been researching all this stuff now so i'm in the middle of finding out answers the bottom line from what i've seen so far is look the the answer to all of it is power leverage negotiations it's like sometimes it's a matter of like who's your lawyer and who else do they represent you know what i mean like who's your lawyer and who else do they represent you know what i mean like who's it's one of those like hey give us a break on this and we'll give you a break on this sometimes it's um stuff just kind of slides by because the artist is too difficult to track down or they don't hear it every story is a little bit different but i can tell you because you mentioned it the notorious big situation that was subject to a massive lawsuit yeah i don't know if you've heard of bridgeport you know this oh absolutely yeah bridgeport famously bought up and the clinton the george clinton parliament funkadelic who featured in this story later by the way their catalog i think george recently bought it back i think there's a happy ending but for a long time they were just basically what are called sample trolls copyright trolls rather they would just go out and litigate like they bought the catalog in order to sue and make money right suing they would all they would like read the liner notes be like oh there's money to be made if you had the bad luck that you sampled from one of their artists yeah you could count on a knock on your door yeah whereas in other situations maybe the artist passed away and maybe the paperwork is missing you know there's every situation is a little bit different but you're right paul's boutique kind of got a pass whereas three feet high and rising didn't is a perfect example those those are pretty diametrically opposed we assume there's like the beastie boys had a had a lawyer or somebody involved who was very you know spot on and made sure that's one possibility i've also heard i think mario caldado uh who is a member of the camp of the beasties camp he gets shout outs on some of their records i think i saw an interview where he mentions that clearance that this was a situation where there actually were a lot of clearances that were done on the cheap so in other words instead of having to give away the ip that copyright itself on the publishing they paid a few hundred bucks one time only and you're one and done forever so that might just have been a great lawyer or a great a very well-contacted individual who reached out and said hey you know just let us let us with a path 500 bucks and and let us put it on the record it's it's i'm sure every single sample has its own story behind it i i i love it and we should probably do a whole episode just on sampling law all this stuff is like what i'm working on for this book and by the end of the year i'll be like even more steeped in all of it um and in in two years you can buy the book there you go all right well that's that's super fascinating uh what's the next sample you have for us well let's keep it moving there's a lot of percussion breaks i'll just really quickly run through them because all of these play the part and actually this is kind of a cool expression the artists themselves used because they had these kind of building blocks of the song that main drum beat that main herbie hancock thing but then they would have a lot of these little momentary what they called fill-ins so it's a really like just for a moment something happens just to have more yeah oral interest stuff happening by the way when i say oral interest i mean a u r a l because there's more than one kind of nobody thought that until you just clarify as it came out of my mouth i realized that it could have been okay as it came out of your mouth okay you know what give the guy a break oral interest can mean many things the one song the one song nation knows a u r that's a good presumption if i'm saying oral i probably mean they're a very smart listener they're very smart they download every week and they're with us but anyway let's hear some of these oral fixations that you have here's one of many fill-ins or oral fixations this is uh one of the percussion breaks from ray barretta's right on 1972 right you recognize this i'll play it for you yeah that's like that's that's a really noticeable yeah that's right before the second verse watch out right exactly i'll play it in the mix now Watch out. By the way, I knew exactly where Bootsy chimed in with the watch out. So props to me, too. Well done. Well done. Starving for a couple minutes. This is fun. I like to isolate the scratches sometimes. And you can hear how imprecise they were. Because this is a human, presumably DJ Toate, literally on the decks, scratching this in for oral interest. That's pretty good. He does it later. Here's another scratch. The old helicopter scratch. What is that? What is that sound? I don't know. It's hard to say. By the way, that could be. I'm sure somebody in the comments will let us know. Oh, man, come on. But that's what the comments sound like to me. But sometimes as a DJ, you get those. You used to get records, and now it's like an MP3 file of just like sound effects. And just like, so, I got it. That's right. Acapella's Anonymous. Yeah. And you could just scratch on those. DJ Tool records. Yeah, exactly. DJ Tools. I'm going to say some of my favorite fill-ins for when we get to the vocal section. No problem. And there's two in particular that are so funny to me and exciting to present. There you go. But let's finish up with some of these instruments. We talked about the Herbie Hancock loop, so I won't play that again. But I will mention, by the way, the Bring Down the Birds, which is the core of the song. It does bear mentioning that this is Ron Carter on bass. Who any Tribe fan will know, because he appears on Low End Theory. And he is, I just learned, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, he is the most recorded jazz bassist in history. Oh. Yeah. So that's him playing that Herbie Hancock bass line. That's fun. Yeah. And by the way, it bears repeating that like with Copyright Law, that discussion we just had, Herbie Hancock gets a writing credit, but you're not hearing Herbie Hancock. You're hearing Ron Carter, right? Well, he was the band leader. Well, I mean, you know, this gets into sort of like power dynamics with law. Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, look. Far be it for me to defend band leader status, but I think it's legitimate. You do? In the sense that like when you have a band full of guys and this guy is saying, okay, I want you to play this, I want you to play this, I want you to play this. Especially in a pre-computer. Nowadays, due to the computer, you can basically program everything. You know, it's the nature of it. It's work for hire. I'm pretty sure Ron Carter showed up that day knowing he would only be paid for his time in the studio, the $1,500, whatever it was. But it also makes you really think. Like what you're hearing. In this song is Ron Carter. Ron Carter is the heartbeat of this song, literally. The entire song, he's playing that bass line. But without researching Bring Down the Birds, we don't, I mean, like, if, you know. Maybe Herbie came up with the line. If Herbie Hancock came up with that and asked him to play it. Maybe they should split it. Huh? No, I agree with you. You're right. I'm all for equality. So I understand that. But I also know that it's like Prince. Like Prince didn't play every instrument in his band. Yeah. You know. But, you know, it is different if. Ron came in and was like, hey, man, I got this idea for a bass line. I gave it to Herbie Hancock. As opposed to Herbie saying, play this. I think those are two very different things. We don't know which. We don't know which. It reminds me of our Sister Nancy episode where we talk about that bass line for Bomb Bomb, the iconic bass line. It's a very similar situation. And unless you were in the room that day making eye contact, did what I play, was it my idea that then you took over and improved upon? Like that entire conversation is its own. Nothing leads to great music like an eye towards the future. Your lawsuits surrounding the song. Always keep that in mind. If you're a musician, always be thinking. That's led to all the great music in my collection. What's interesting about the song, we've talked about Bootsy a few times. Now we get to just pause and talk about Bootsy's importance to not just the song, but to the genre of funk in general. Now, Bootsy Collins, we've been alluding to him. He is the voice on this record, which is funny because he's actually one of the greatest bass players. Yeah, he's got that like. Baby Bubba. I don't even know how you describe that voice. It's kind of cartoon. He's like, he's kind of a living cartoon. He's a cartoon. He's a cartoon character in the most respectful, cool way that I can say he's a cartoon. I mean, like, you know, you look at him in the early days with Parliament and Funkadelic, like, he's Bootsy. And, you know, thank God, you know, we still have this institution. Oh, and thank God he met George Clinton, right? So he starts out with his brother. He's playing for James Brown's band for not very long. Like, that's where he gets his start. I think he's 18 or 19. He's only in the band. He's only in James Brown's band for 11 months. But in those 11 months, it's him on Sex Machine, Superbad, Soul Power, like some of the, like, classic tracks of that era, which is the best James Brown era. But, you know, when he's in that band, he meets some other band members. He meets members when he's with James Brown. He meets Fred Wesley on trombone. He meets Maceo Parker on sax. The Horny Horns. The Horny Horns. And when one day Lady Miss Keir, before they're signed, she sends just a fan letter to Bootsy Collins saying, we love you. I think she sends a demo version. That makes so much sense. She sends their demo to him and he says, he writes back and says, look, if you're ever in the studio, give me a call. And she's elated. She does a dance. And one day that call comes because they get signed to Elektra. The groove is in the heart. They're recording it. They're like, let's call Bootsy. Bootsy's like, yeah, I'm down. And he comes in. He puts on that vocal track, which we'll play some isolated in a minute. He does not play bass, interestingly enough. Makes sense. Yeah. Nobody's playing bass on this. There's no bass needed because we got Ron Carter already. Already got the sample. But he does bring Fred and Maceo from the Horny Horns. That's fantastic. So the only music added to samples and vocals that are original. original, are the horny horns. And here they are. Here's the horn line. It's funny because to my ear, we talked about this on another episode, like in the mix, which I'll play for you now, it's blending with another line. So the melody that I had heard in my head was different because when you hear it together, it sounds like this. I thought it was but it's just a fraction of that. And you know why? I'm just seeing it now because that horn line is interplaying with this sample. It's just that, and then the horn plays, and then this happens. So I'll just play them together. That's so cool. You can tell that Macy and Fred were listening to the track and being like, you know, let's play where there isn't something already. And give it like a dialogue. So I'll now play those two things together. It's almost like they're responding to another band member, but it's Ron Carter, you know, recorded 15 years earlier. By the way, that was my favorite part of the horns. That's so great. That little line. That really makes it a lot of fun. Yeah. I'm embarrassed to say that, but you know, as a folks, my age, the first time I ever saw Boosie was probably in this video. Oh, definitely me too. And the first time I ever heard the phrase horny horns was in a Paula Abdul song. I'm in a funky way, horny horns. And I was like, what is she talking about? But by the way, that was also like an early house song that I feel like could have easily been played in some of these, not the most underground, but like sort of like pop underground, New York house music parties at that period. I don't know the song. Play it. Yeah. It's called vibology. Here's a, here's a little sample of it. That's so funny. I've never heard this song. It's so funny hearing it. Is that like, it's so contextually a house track that could not exist without delight and Vogue coming before it to sort of steer the ship on what the houseyness is. This sounds like the Paula Abdul. That was probably going. To the glam slam and like trying to like get Prince to write your next album. And, uh, and I love that like, that's like, that's like the fun piano driven early nineties house music that, you know, was just kind of on our radar. We didn't know there was a whole culture that went with it, but like, I, I hear it on a Madonna's deeper and deeper, you know, great track. Um, somebody should, somebody should bring that sound back cause it's very, very specific pop house overlap where it's not being spun in the deep house clubs at three in the morning necessarily. Maybe for fun it is actually, but it's not like one of those early masters at work, like, you know, seminal tracks, but, but it was the house that made it to, you know, relatively, uh, not suburban house, but like a house in zone four in Atlanta in the early days where, where I was listening, not everything in this song is a sample. That's very, somebody did actually go into the studio. Lady of this cure. Um, what do you have? From half of the vocals, all of the like melodic vocals, I should say come from Lady Miss care. And then there's these wonderful, there's, there are two different raps happening and I've got some outtakes from that from bootsies rap that wasn't fully used. And, uh, of course, Q-tip, we're going to hear from him, but then the other half of the songs vocals are from these wonderful samples and some of them are amazing. And these are the little interspersed fill-ins that I was mentioning before. So altogether they comprise the vocals. Let's start with Lady Miss care and her iconic every episode I got to say the word I iconic, not going to stop. And her iconic first verse, the chills that you spill up my back, keep me filled with satisfaction when we're done satisfaction of what's to come. I couldn't ask for another man. Those vocals are actually, I don't want to say that they're better. I always knew she could sing, but like they actually sound like more robust and, and, and sexy, really rich, really warm, really rich. And she's, it's really fun sounding too. Like there's so many sounds in the song. I guess you can actually forget that at the heart of it is actually a really good vocal. the song would not work if it was just all these incredible samples yeah it would it's it's lady miss keir is the heartbeat of all of it yeah and of course the lyrics and the message you know she's always her the album is called world click and so much about who she is as a person as an individual is there's so much virtue and beauty and like love that comes from her she talks about on the record you know that the world is a global village there's songs on later records about like global warming she's very much kind of bringing a message which actually now i think about it is a very kind of hippie message right it brings that into the music so let's hear a little more of lady miss keir is that everybody's favorite part that'll swoop the whole thing works yeah the whole thing works it's beautiful what a freaking good voice yeah yeah i think that's that's maybe the part i did not anticipate about actually hearing this you know it's funny i've been thinking about this band a little bit because you can go back on youtube there's all this great like live footage of them so their earliest performances are all these sort of east village like nightclubs you know what i mean like this is a band that forms out of dance music which reminds me a little bit of the massive attack story yeah there's a lot of overlap this is a dj centric artist entity where they're writing songs that are sort of poppy but it's coming from a dj perspective of piecing together with the skills that they have and the instruments and the same period samplers same rough roughly the same period but also the performance is taking place not in a rock band setting but in a dancing setting in an it's open air i suppose in jamaica and in the massive attack bristol example but here this is a east village nightclub and it's the classic live pa situation where you've got a backing track you've got lots of dancers it's really about the show and the song it's not to say it's secondary but it's a little bit secondary you're in this gay nightclub in the late 80s and it's a big show and there's 20 people on stage having a blast and um i was just struck by how that kind of reminds me you mentioned b52s they have a party background too um later on scissors parties in athens georgia scissor sisters have a similar beginning east village it wouldn't shock me yeah in fact i'd love to do a scissors sisters episode because yeah that first album was so great it's so great and um very similar beginnings where it's east village it's backing track with like performance more than it is like we're a band and we're rocking you yeah so it's interesting the connection between all of those bands absolutely and then maybe this is everyone's favorite part the horton here's a who the depth of hula groove moves us to the end hoop we're going through two horton here's a who you want to hear that with a with a harmony let's let's layer that a little bit the depth of hula groove moves us to the end hoop we're going through two horton here's a who now i will say i don't know what i thought she was i definitely didn't hear anything about the nth hoop and i definitely didn't catch horton here's a who so you know uh who didn't have the internet guys like it was so easy to just guessing seeing whatever you thought the person was singing back then i actually what i bought um the diggable planets uh rebirth of slick album in the back of the liner notes that said hey if you want a copy of the lyrics send a self-addressed envelope to this did you do it p.o box i did and they never sent me the lyrics but that's how big a fan you have that on vinyl that is so hard to get i've been looking for that that's that's like 300 bucks i think it was cassette okay even the cassettes back then obviously had the liner notes and you could send uh you could you could use snail mail to get the lyrics sent to you speaking of diggable planets like there are i do have world click on vinyl and it's funny because i forgot that original yeah and i forgot that it does have like um on the inner sleeve it's got like a cartoon story which is very similar to day last soul's three feet high and rising if you remember also has kind of a cartoon story but in this cartoon story um lady miss keir says something about how her nickname is doodle bug oh no more lawsuits all right so the thing i want to play next is q-tips verse but before we get into that diallo i know you're a fan we're both fans of tribe called quest but you're an especially deep fan so please talk to me about q-tip well look i mean um this is not going to be our tribe called quest episode obviously we're both we will be doing one we will definitely do one ones in the work but uh to me this is a part of what q-tip has has done for so long um which is he jumps from genre to genre and he he shows up in just some amazing songs he you know this was one of the first times obviously that we got to see his versatility um this song came out before low end theory which is kind of blows my mind but um you know i think about the song bang bang bang that he did with mark ronson uh a little party never killed nobody off of the great gatsby soundtrack i think it was like a fergie song but of course q-tip came on for the i just i find him to be a music fan like us and so it doesn't surprise me that he's an early adopter of the idea that a rapper can show up on anything an r&b song he can produce he produced you know like he was uh i believe the producer on the first two hip-hop songs that he ever popped up on the the jungle brothers uh i think he produced two songs for the and and had his own verse on those even before people's instinctive travels so you know q-tip came up with the name for the band right in that verse something yeah that's where he renames the the group tribe called quest so i think that you know and he produces so many of the when when you discover that q-tip is actually the force behind some of the most artistically sampling hip-hop uh tracks that a tribal quest has released um the fact that he remixed naz and he remixed so many people in the 90s and and the 2000s you know before he ever gets to even vibrant thing um which is enjoying a second life right now as the sample basis of a dance track uh called dust um and so i think that's kind of the the the the the the the the um right now in 2024 he's just he's got that versatility and he knows how to come in and do hip-hop on a song that may not technically be hip-hop but make it feel like it's hip-hop and and i'm just always been a supporter i'm gonna give a shout out real quick to his uh solo album which was uh called kamal the abstract and there was a song on there called even if it is so which i just every time i hear it it gives me chills it's just one of those great hip-hop songs maybe he has so much work that i haven't even like delved into which is true of so many of my favorite artists i haven't heard every david bowie song but like i got it i'm gonna check that out because he's just firmly this new york guy yeah you know this rapper who you know if he had been alive at the time he would have done the rap verse on blondie's the rapture you know what i mean like he's just that guy that's you know what it's interesting you said that because the backstory about how he got connected to this song the story that lady miss cure herself tells is um she said this is before tribe blew up yeah he was hanging with the jungle brothers and we opened up the for them one time yeah at a club called hotel amazon we played that song live and he asked if he could do 16 bars on it i also heard i mean maybe it's the same story but i also heard that tawa tay uh knew africa baby bomb uh who's a member of the jungle maybe that's the connection maybe that's that maybe how they were on that show together that would make sense well the other story which we're about to hear the the bars themselves dimitri explains how when he came into the studio all i was a notepad he just started writing this is a quote from from dj dimitri from delight um as we were laying down boots he's party started writing he just listened to the song and said give me 15 minutes and then he goes in and he lays down the rap and the backup vocal two takes and he was in and he was out there you go there you go let's hear a little bit of that get get with it where they can't then quit it quit it stomp on a stoop when i hear a funk loop playing pop piper follow hoods shoot baby just sing about the groove man you know people think they can rap until you try and do rap in like karaoke night and then you realize oh i don't know what the hell i'm doing it takes so much breath control and uh you know with nothing else around it you realize just how difficult it would be to both write that and to perform i'm not hearing any punching in and out that's that is the one take that we were told just took place that's amazing here's the by the way i think growing up the only part i knew was baby just sing about the groove yeah just how it ends i think i i remember electric torso i remember thinking that was kind of like a cool thing well and just for fun here is some of uh here is his second take where he does the back where he's responding to his first take uh something lurks in this torso yeah got a deal you wanna know delightful truly delightful like making it doing especially at a show show and by the way another cool thing that i hope people notice there's like he's not even doing like you know a a b b c c rhyme scheme like there are times when like he goes half a bar and then rhymes it like that's something that i equate more with like naz you know about three years after this right yeah who would like cut the bar in half and then just make it rhyme with that first half of that one bar and like maybe a little rock him is doing it right here yeah well the thing about rock him is that i think that you know he's more like what i feel like people thought rap was and krs won like it was like hard and q-tip is really one of those first obviously they're slick rick there are a lot of people who are rapping smooth but like but the abstract poet aka q-tip aka kamal uh he was really rhyming smooth early on and i i don't know if you've heard of him but he's like he's like he's a great rapper and he's like he's a great singer and it's easy to forget that he's one of the first people to do that it's incredible yeah such a great verse i also really appreciate the fact that it's part of this daisy age in hip-hop where like you know everybody was kind of dressing of guys in my high school i wasn't cool enough to pull it off but they were sort of dressing as sort of like neo hippies at the time and the one place where i did meet them was i wore like a peace medallion you know like that was like that was my contribution to the culture you had the peace medallion i had the peace medallion was it africa with like like the colors i didn't have the african medallion but it's like my best friend wore the african medallion i wore the peace medallion we thought we were cool um and we were damn it um i can still see the white shirt that i used to wear it was an all-white shirt so it would accentuate the fact that i had this black rope with a with a peace medallion at the bottom you're absolutely right and i'm but but it all goes towards the idea of a world click yes and it should be noted that like the philosophies are fully overlapping with the jl soul tribe it's called groove is in the heart it meshes all these different genres 70s they're pulling in bootsy from the 70s samples q-tip from like you know hip-hop and new york culture it really makes me wonder like what is peace medallion and what is peace medallion and what is peace medallion and what is peace is going on right now that could be as cross-germinating in terms of genre and as welcoming i mean there's something really welcoming about this song not just in its lyrics and its music and its people but it's just it kind of just welcomes you all in to say hey we're gonna play some music we're gonna dance and we're gonna have a good time right and i feel like you know i would love for somebody to make a song like that today because i do feel like nowadays people take their genre pretty damn seriously and uh everything has to be so personal that only one person can even sing it you know like i think that it'd be great to have that sort of welcoming vibe in one song perfectly put and speaking of welcoming vibe what a perfect segue into uh the third but not least important voice on this record which is bootsy himself yeah who interjects all these really crucial we're talking about the fill-ins with the samples he does the same kind of thing with his little silly interjections so let's play a few of those which also by the way you were just talking about the over we were talking about the overlap just culturally and philosophically with the daisy age and the delight aesthetic of retro 70s samples well p funk you could argue with their bringing funk and rock and psychedelia together and like kind of crazy cartoonishness with their live performances and personas they were doing something very similar like a previous generation so what a perfect meeting of the minds when you necessarily always feel authentic because maybe there isn't the same kind of meeting of the minds but what a perfect combination that we've got tribe called quest with d light and you know p funk james brown in the form of bootsy on this track well let's hear him let me give you a plug sweet lips while i'm on the air now bend over my body and uh rub your fingers through my hair your mouth run like water a very beautiful sight now put on my favorite group uh they call themselves a delight now i have never heard that in my life that's not in the song that's not in the song but that is on some of the remixes used some of his i was like that shit must be way buried in the mix no no no it's not in the final version but it is uh that was used in one of the like remixes i believe yeah no bootsy's got a whole rap actually he's got several different sections of the song that he just kind of writes his own little poetry like that they ended up just using his little like moments like that's the truth oh yeah yeah dig right it's literally that's so crucial though just this one i remember it that's i remember watch out is that the next one let's see no that's right i remember that one too astronomical what does he say there that's astronomical oh i thought he said something about a monocle astronomical there's the gold right there astronomical but but for the record sounds like he says astronomical listen to it again astronomical there's a distinct m sound in there what is but there is no word no i know i think i think it's a flow but it's hilarious it's awesome astronomical he's so funny he's such a i'm gonna write a tv show called astronomical it's gonna be a a woman who balances her mother you know being a mom and working at nasa yeah groove is in the heart i think they use that i never thought of succotash as being filthy but now i'm gonna think twice about ordering and then of course the song ends with come on y'all y'all are crazy man was that cool can i hear that last that last verse thing the whole last verse thing lots of lots of really he sounded like he was ready to get out of there and get to the club he's like is that what's going on here is that what's going on here is that what's going on here is that cool are we done yet because i've given you my best now we can't conclude the samples without as promised getting to some of those little fill-ins that are from these random exotica and 60s records that are part of the vocal but are actually samples they're not musical samples they're little thingy samples i've got two in particular that i'm really that are two of my favorite okay so one of my favorite samples is of course we all know that i couldn't dance with another yeah what is that that this is a really fun thing to do i'm gonna do a little one sample because it actually comes from this this is the green acres theme from 1966 and that little moment is eva gabor right here and in the mix they've taken that and they've done a kind of classic sampling thing where you just go i i i no i love it i love the stuff like that it's a sampler yeah that's awesome the five hundred dollars that she found in the back of the cab it's made so many hits went to sampling eva gabor from green acres and doing and then more importantly which is so like two of hearts i need you which had already come out which by the way i i i i need you wow wow connection right i love it i mean there's something about a good sampler used as a percussive instrument that will never get old because right that i i i i i trope came from 1986's stacy q hit two of hearts so that's coming from green acres the tv show and uh this other sample is a sampler that's been used for a long time and it's a sampler that's been used for a long time if you've got children cover their ears just for the next little moment because what i have been in my notes i call the motorboat sound i'll play it for you in the mix um has a pretty funny origin but it is a little bit not safe for work so that little moment that i call it the motorboat i heard that it's like a person like like you know shaking that's what i thought until i found the source okay the source is going to blow your mind and offend your children and i'm going to play it for you in the mix guys turn it off uh this is a track called hateful head helen by sweet pussy pauline and the song is called work this genre of the music is this the song is called work this pussy they want to put their face in our asses and go but they don't know how to ask i never get tired i mean the context that's the best context i feel like this whole song i've ever heard name a better song name a better song name a better song name a better song i can't even i can't even you thought green acres was great oh green acres i think green acres is still my preferred but i will say this uh this to me this whole song seems like a collage of like albums and and and songs that uh dimitri and maybe talent as well we're playing in absolutely their set and they're like let's take our favorite moments from like all these this word because beat you're absolutely right this hand clap this tambourine physically their ability to do that existed with the record they already owned and we're playing and the sampler suddenly it's like we can make music now with these tools but by the way that means this song which i'm not going to ask you to repeat the title this song must have had an acapella on like the b side of the 12 inch because where else do you get the acapella exactly at that time in 1989 by the way they 100 of the time you'll be getting them on the 12 on the 12th yeah yeah by the way we haven't even mentioned it they were they were playing and performing the song as early as 1989 yeah so like this is a song they probably crafted in 1988 which is which is that's right which is nuts they were crafting it and then the final icing on the cake well if i may work this pussy acapella there you go i think you just like looking me in my eye and saying um now for the part for the sample i'm most excited about uh the one part of this song that i i even my young brain knew had to be a sample um but back in the pre-internet days we had no way of looking up what a sample you know but i could tell it came from another song right and it's the very beginning of the song is would you like to dance and like it's so a part of this song but you're about to play and you're absolutely right to point out that it because it is the beginning of the song it instantly gives you the vibe for the song you could tell it like that it's old it's kind of weird i hadn't dj'd before i could tell this sounded like a record skipping you know it sounded like a very loop. I am so thrilled to share this with you guys because I can guarantee a lot of you have not looked this song up before i know i haven't luxury will you please play us the song they sample for the first sample in the song this is from the album the art of belly dancing 1969 love it bel shazar tommy genopopolis and the grecian knights we're going to dance and exercise and have some fun so that you will fully enjoy yourself how about getting into some loose clothing i mean i'm gonna say right now listen to this on youtube it is such a cool cool song uh shout out to all the belly dancers out there i i wish i had known we have a lot of belly dancers i would have mixed this in to some of my dj sets early on because i because the song is incredible it is really cool it's just the nature of music law we can't play that much of the song here on the show but when the show's over please go off and listen to it it's a really cool song right well now's as good as chance as any to plug our one song playlist which does exist on spotify we we forget to mention it almost every episode but we do have every song we play on the episode in one easy to find playlist format so just go to spotify and search one song i added the word interpolation there to the title to make it easily found and uh yeah you can just relive both the episode and then listen to all the songs afterwards i need a catchphrase i need a catchphrase every you know what we're not catchphrase balanced right now i think your catchphrase is a catchphrase shout out like last time we talked about it is not my but then you went on to the episode shout out many times in that same episode night not well the burden of effort is on you to come up with the better no i think it's on the listeners listeners dm me um on instagram and tell me what my tell me what my catchphrase should be i need a catchphrase maybe that they should demand maybe there should be some sort of like i don't know prize yes we'll come up with a prize the prize the person with the winning catchphrase catchphrase uh their name mentioned we're gonna we're gonna not only mention your name but we're gonna get you something nice probably from the closet of kevin hart or a pristine copy of hateful head helens work that no no we're not the kids have their ears they've already heard no we told him to cover twice or three times slipped it in dude what do you mean i slipped it in you're the one who said slipped it in heartbeat hr is going to disgusting disgusting all right so diallo delight is categorized as a one-hit wonder which rubs me the wrong way a little bit but i understand where they would get that impression this is a monster hit and there wasn't really anything after this that was quite as monstrous so neither of us think that's fair well we'll talk about that in a minute but let me ask you this yeah what other acts are unfairly categorized as one-hit wonders let's set the record straight oh well you know i actually have a little bit of an issue with the phrase one-hit wonder i obviously there are some bands and artists for which this is true it usually said fred we're looking at you but you know i did some research on this matter right and uh rolling stone did a list of like the top 10 one-hit wonders where they listed delight alongside like chumba wumba and harvey danger no no i'm like not you know by the way the same list had the verve it had um house of pain i'm not even the biggest house of pain but like that first album was actually really good and the second album had some had some basically some other groups and i was just like what i feel like one hit wonder usually comes from a place i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know of ignorance i think i've seen blur on these lists by the way yeah i've seen blur song too on these lists it's insane to me it's it's very to me like were they big enough in the united states because usually it's an artist who had a very full and happy career uh not on these shores so i don't know if i believe in one-hit wonders as applied here but i will turn the question i don't is that a fair thing but but i'm asking you i agree so i i'm going to build on what you say i think the phenomenon of calling it a one-hit wonder speaks to the the speaker of that sentence not necessarily being a musician or even an artist themselves because it implies that it's just the numerical value of units shipped or chart positions that determines the validity because to call somebody a one-hit wonder is to demean them it's essentially definitely pejorative you only did one thing that was important and everything after that doesn't matter which i find like kind of offensive artist so you know the thing specifically with delight i can address is again the album itself first of all power of love is arguably as good if not a better that's the song i'm more likely to dj for example than groove is in the heart um so the whole record though world click has lots of bangers on it and i bought the two follow-ups and um the second one was a bit i will admit i wasn't so crazy about the second record when it came out it was a bit disappointing but the third record is incredible and i'm going to play something for from that record and i'm going to play something a little bit later on the episode but you know delight i think certainly peaked with this song in terms of their global appeal and their ability to get you know booked for shows etc it's definitely the case that when i've tracked their post-band experiences it seems like toate has had a pretty good career absolutely i mean like that's that's my other problem with calling them one-hit wonders because you know the individual pieces of this band have gone on to do such great stuff you know one song that i wanted to play uh is toate's tech nova oh perfect because you know it's a very catchy tune some of the people listening will probably know it yeah and by the way or you know let's let's hear a little bit of that so good so the sound of 1994 or whatever like it's such a great song and by the way just to close the loop on that so q-tip comes on groove is in the heart toate releases that song tech nova and then q-tip finds a way he finds a way well here check this out he finds a way to sample it for the song find a way and it's part of a special genre of hip-hop where i love that they sample something and the thing that they're saying is not what is technically being said i'll explain on the other side check this out so i'm sure you can hear the sample in there um she's singing in portuguese you know she's she's a brazilian singer i love that fife is singing english words that sound kind of like what she's singing but it's not at all what she's singing it's and a sample and an interpolation happening at the same time yeah and i also like this one of my other favorite examples of this of all time is the remix of the song that she sang in portuguese and she's singing in portuguese it ain't hard to tell by naz because uh it sounds like biz marquis saying naz is the king of disco and naz naz naz is the king of disco and when in fact what biz marquis had actually said was i'm ha i'm highly recognized as the king of disco and and he they just you know they they they chop off the i love that the first part of recognizing just say so technically saying naz naz naz is the king but it sounds like naz and we thought he was saying naz so i love it when people sample but they don't say what the person's actually singing it reminds me a little bit of like the white lines to liquid liquid comparison oh yeah liquid liquid in caver in the original song it's so he's saying something like slipping and out of banana and i mean it's like maybe a little but that's like it's actually a creative technique to mishear something and turn it into what it sounded like to you did it in a script just right years ago it's it's it's it's a normal way i made up a word and i was like that's a funny word and then we put it and then it's yours you own it because you totally you kind of worked from it the problem is they also took the baseline while they were doing that so if you don't also take the baseline you can kind of get away with using it as a creative that's really cool because i didn't realize i'm a fan of liquid liquid and obviously uh white lines um i didn't realize that liquid liquid wasn't saying that until i you pointed it out just now right it's really cool it's funny my favorite story about white lines is that apparently the original version it was you know it was like white lines it was basically a pro cocaine song and then when they found out that like that wasn't cool they added in the but don't do it i know like it feels like an after fact because get higher baby sounds like everyone higher baby student 54 is like yeah get higher baby don't ever come down but then they throw in the but don't do it it's almost like singing a song and they'd be like opposite day it's barely plausibly credible that they mean it when they say that so tell i mean we sort of we've followed his career by the way he's come out with some really good albums in just the last three years he comes out with an album almost every year uh recently i would say uh go check him out one of those albums is called lp it's a really good album we're checking out where are the other glasses line too he's got those iconic glasses i think he puts out his own glasses i believe it uh and he lives in like a really remote part of japan now he lives the life he just puts out albums and he lives in this mountainous region i think it's a nagano oh it's like this is the only part it's like the furthest part of japan from the ocean in any direction so he's as far from the ocean he just listens to his records all day and makes design sunglasses really cool records check out lps i think it's 2021s what about super dj dimitri so i mean i looked into what happened to lady miss kira and dimitri they don't really have much of an internet presence after a certain point but i know that lady miss kira has been djing for many years it's sort of her i know she's like got a very - Like activist streak. - Very big activist streak. Right. So she's continuing the sort of same philosophy that she's always been doing. She's just making art in the world, sort of touring, doing DJ stuff. And it's kind of funny because I was I was looking at what happened to DJ Dimitri. He moved to Berlin and ended up marrying, I won't say a friend of mine, but someone who I know from the San Francisco scene who randomly ended up there. This this woman, Jesse Evans, who's a who's a musician that I remember from San Francisco back in the day, wound up in Berlin and wound up marrying Dimitri Brill. And they have a band together called Naughty Siren. And he's still in band, still making music. That's amazing. Good for him. Yeah. Doing it in Berlin. I love that. Yeah. So all of them, you know, doing well. And, you know, if they ever reach out to the show, maybe we'll have them on. Before we go, we're going to do one more song. This is the part of the show where we share a new song with you. The One Song Nation. And with each other a lot of times, because obviously I don't know what you're going to share. You don't know what I'm going to share. Luxury, you go first. What do you got for me? Well, as I promised, you know, D-Lite's third record in particular is called Dew Drops in the Garden. That was so slept on. And like I actually returned to that record a lot, like over the years, just like it dawns on me. Like I want to hear especially this song in particular, which is called Apple Juice Kissin'. It's just a really fun song. And it reminds it's a very New York in the summer kind of song has that vibe going for it. And just one thing that's fun about that song is, you know, this song, Groove is in the Heart, was one of the first songs where we've talked about how we had in our, you know, we were younger then. We didn't necessarily know how music was made, but we recognized that there were samples in it. That was the beginning of that mode where I was starting to be like, well, what was the sample? Where did it come from? And of course, kids today don't know. There was no Who sampled back then. There was no YouTube. There was no Shazam. So sometimes in life, you would just go for months or years and then you'd be in a cafe and you'd hear the break in the full song that it came from. And you just, well, this is me. I would say you. One would, I would add that to my mental Rolodex. Yeah, I would add that to my mental Rolodex. So I just bring that up because this song has a couple of really fun connections I'll quickly take you to. One is that introduction comes from this song by The Clash. This is Armageddon time. Which is a cover of this song by Willie Williams. Which last but not least, relies on the rhythm from this famous song, which is called Real Rock Sound Dimension. This is a classic Studio One classic. So this is the fourth and final layer of that song. And I actually lied. There's a fifth layer, but I'm not going to get into it. But just part of what I love about the phenomenon of sampling is the storytelling and the layers. And over the years, you start to be like, oh, wait, and you hear a new thing that connects it to the previous thing. So I didn't know some of these layers until many years later. But Delight, I have to thank for being one of the first bands that unlocked the beauty of sampling for me outside of hip hop. That's really cool. Diallo, what about you? Do you have one more song for me? Yeah, I mean, we were talking about Q-Tip earlier and I revisited his. You know, one of his later albums, solo albums. And I might have even mentioned it earlier in the show. But the name of the song is Even If It Is So. And it's one of those songs that I think is just it builds, it builds, and it's just wonderful. And this is Q-Tip, a.k.a. Kamal. And the song is Even If It Is So. So that snippet won't really do it justice. You have to sort of listen to the whole, I think it's about a six minute track. But it's really a great song. It gives me such joy when I'm reminded that artists that I love have more work that I haven't been exposed to, that I haven't heard yet. So, like, I'm so excited to go and dig deep into Kamal's career. Yeah. And I assure you that at some point we will do a Tribe Called Quest episode. I worked with. No doubt. Q-Tip on the Maya Rudolph show briefly, middle of last decade. So if we can get him on the show, we will do that. That would be a dream. Absolutely. Absolutely. Come on the show, Q-Tip. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, reach out to us. The best way to reach me is on Instagram. I am at D-I-A-L-L-O. And on TikTok, I am at Diallo Riddle. And I am at Luxury L-U-X-X-U-R-Y on Instagram or at LuxuryXX on TikTok. As always, we love it. If you like the show, please tell your friends. Share it with them. Give it five stars and a nice review. It really helps. It really helps. If you're going to give us one star, just don't. Every episode, we're going to complain about the one star. It was just one dude, one time. And it's so annoying because we're like 4.9 on all the platforms. Oh, that guy. And he was wrong. He was wrong. He was wrong about the Beatles. He was wrong. All right. Help me end this thing, Luxury. Well, I am producer DJ Musicologist Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ. Y'all are riddle. We will see you next time.