"Jaw-dropping. Perfectly paced, clever, funny, and down-right funky." -- The Wire
Steinski (advertising writer, DJ, and record collector Steve Stein) produced his first record in 1983. In response to a nationwide remix contest by Tommy Boy Records, he and partner Double Dee (engineer and studio wizard Douglas DJ Franco) produced "The Payoff Mix." A panel of ten judges--including Afrika Bambaataa, Shep Pettibone, Jellybean Benitez, and Arthur Baker--unanimously chose the mix as the winner. Within two weeks "The Payoff Mix" became a Top 10 request on urban radio nationwide, but the release never saw official status and was subsequently bootlegged countless times. The Payoff Mix became the first record in a series now known as The Lessons. Double Dee and Steinski followed up with cut-and-paste landmark Lesson Two: The James Brown Mix, which Fatboy Slim called "the record that always gets the crowd going." Then came Lesson 3: The History of Hip Hop. The series quickly became highly sought after collectibles and led to homage records by DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, DJ Format, and , Steinski has produced a variety of tracks, and this Illegal Art retrospective collects everything from his hip-hop narrative about the Kennedy assassination (originally a white-label promo, also issued as a Flexi-disk for UK music magazine NME) to the 1998 remix of Afrika Bambaataa's "Jazz" with Double Dee. Besides the completist archive, the release will also includes the critically acclaimed "Nothing To Fear: A Rough Mix," an hour-long mashup that was produced for Solid Steel/BBC London, described by Salon as, "the closest thing to a masterpiece the genre has yet produced" and perhaps the most obvious precursor (along with The Lessons) to Girl Talk'sNight Ripper.
Disc 1:
The Payoff Mix
Lesson 2 (James Brown Mix)
Lesson 3 (History of Hip Hop)
Jazz
Voice Mail (Sugar Hill Suite)
The Motorcade Sped On
It's Up To You (Television Mix)
I'm Wild About That Thing
The Big Man Laughs
Vox Apostolica
Is We Going Under?
Ain't No Thing
Everything's Disappeared
Number Three On Flight Eleven
Disc 2:
Tonight From Ny Intro
Swingset (10 Beautiful Girls Mix)
Opening Credits
Greatest Man Alive (Man's Game Mix)
The Id (Small World Mix)
Let's Get It On (Big Daddy Mix)
Hit the Disco (Mc Enuff Mix)
Lolita (Burning Mix)
Hot Spot (Terrible Love Mix)
It's a Funky Thing Pt. 1 (Special Feature Mix)
Bboy Breakdown (You Got the Job Mix)
B-Beat Classic (Airwave Interlude Mix)
Funk Construction (Prodigal Son Mix)
Them That's Not (Cash Mix)
Swan Lake (Beat Poets Mix)
Here We Come (Death Mix)
Product of the Enviroment (Redfern Gowanus Electro Mix)
Before Shadow, way before Girl Talk... Long before label mate Girl Talk became known as the King of Mashup, hell, even before M/A/R/R/S sliced together the inimitable "Pump Up The Volume", two advertising dudes named Steve "Steinski" Stein and Douglas "Double Dee" Di Franco put together a mix of the most used hip-hop breaks for a contest, one judged by the likes of Afrika Bambaataa. They won, and thus was born the first in their series of "The Lessons" (Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow would later recreate these live using the original vinyl). This two-disc explores every genre, dropping beats over everything from Humphrey Bogart, Looney Toones, Clint Eastwood and The Zapruder Film samples, the myriad James Brown breaks, Led Zeppelin's "The Crunge" and a whole ton of stuff you have to Google to figure out. Simply put, this collection is the mix-tape dreams are made of, an equal blend of humor, cool and certifiable bada$$ collage-work by the master.
What it means "Hey, I recognize that sample from..." If you're into the whole cut-up and dub genre of music, you've probably heard Steinski for years. Maybe it was a Steinski cut, maybe it was Steinski mixed into someone else's work. Many of the actual cuts on this disk floated up to the surface over the years, but saw limited or no release. Now, amazingly, they have a wide release to the masses--what magic happened to clear all of the samples and material is unknown. Any fan will long for more, but this is a great collection that covers the ground back to the infancy of digital sampling, and inspired countless musicians. Buy this 2 disk set, its a great history, and strong sales may pave the way for more treasures.
Be an outlaw, buy this disk! Oh what a lovely collection. Like taking a dictionary to a desert island because it has all the classics in it, just out of order, this is a true desert island disk. I keep expecting the RIAA to break my car window and bust me for the uncleared samples. But it would be worth it.
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