A Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation"
00:00Hello, this is your one-song podcast.We'll be enhancing your appreciation of a tribe called Quest.This is Part 2, a song of The Midnight Marauders.Luxury.Today's song is one of the defining tracks of Mid-90s hip-hop.That's right, Diallo.This song has been featured on a slew, slew of best-of-list.In fact, Rock the Bell's named it the third greatest hip-hop beat of all time just last year.
00:25That's right, off the platinum selling, classic record Midnight Marauders from a Tribe calledThis song would go on to be one of the most recognizable in the group's storied discography.Relax yourself.Sit back and enjoy.It's electric relaxation from a Tribe Call Quest.I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle.And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers...You like that one.
01:08That was a good whistle.Oh, thank you.If you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode.And while you're there, please like and subscribe.You know, in the last episode, we talked at length about how, you know, moving out of people's instinctive travels,they really adopted, like, this attempt to bring low-end bass and, like, stand-up bass and really just own jazz in ways that, like,almost nobody else in hip-hop could have done.There were other people who were doing it and people who had done it.
01:35But as you said in that last episode, they really just exploded big with the way that they did it.Yeah, it was finding the samples.It was also taking specific samples, like the loops that.themselves. We're not just jazz because of the instrumentation. It's because of some of the chordchanges. It's a lot of the sort of more colorful, spicy notes that you find outside of the pop and funkand rock cannon for that matter. It gives it a sort of sophistication to some of the choices.Right. I'm so glad you bring up sophistication because there's also, it wasn't just the sample.It was the way they layered the sample. So it created a sort of a one plus one equals three
02:06level of music results. Absolutely. And we're going to be getting to that when we get into thestems. I was actually, for this episode, I did something a little different where I was, I justdecided to recreate. Did you clear this with me?I did my best to recreate not justwhat the samples were, but how they were choppedup because it's only been two years, butthe ability to manipulate samplesonly gets easier during this time. There are
02:26some of the earliest computersthat are replacing the need to have perfectlylined up cutting from vinylor using small samples from the earliersamplers. They have some greater capabilitiesand what they do with that is really remarkablein this song. D'allel, we mentionedat the end of the last episode, which you should go back and listen
02:42to if you haven't already, Tribe Call Quest andWe mentioned that it's just two years apart,but it's almost like two completely different worldsat this point in hip-hop.It definitely felt like rap was in a different place.You know, by 93, like West Coasthad emerged as like a leader of this likebrighter, more G-funk and fluent sound.
03:00It's important to note that the low-in theorycomes out in 91.Then the chronic comes out and just explodes.Like, it's not just a big record in terms of hip-hop,but like people who had never listened to hip-hopbefore are suddenly listening to it.that video for nothing but a G thing is everywhere.And I think the New York, which had always been the home and the hub and the center of hip-hop,
03:22there was no way they could ignore just the explosion of culture that was sort of led by The Chronic.So by the time Midnight Marauders comes, you know, Q-Tips heard a lot of new influences.Yeah, and Q-Tip himself says, when we put out low-in theory, Drey was like,I just did this thing called The Chronic when I heard your joint.In other words, Drey was influenced for the chronic bylaw in theory, exactly.That's crazy.Which, as he, Tip goes on to say in the same quote, that made me make my joint.So in other words, that influence was there.
03:53And then when Tip heard the chronic, I was like, ah!And we made Midnight Marauders.And then he goes on to say, and then he put out Snoop and I heard Wu-Tang, and I was like, I'm going to go home and eat pie.That's a really funny line.Yes, he did.He's a funny guy.I love Q-Tip.I love K-Tin.
04:09He's the same guy who said, it's like butter, baby.It's like butter.One thing I noticed about the chronic, even at the time, was that it was clean.Like, it sounded really clean coming out of the speakers that you got put into your Honda at Allen Ed's Auto Center.It's like that, like this, and it's like that, and it's like this.And who gives a fuck about those?So just chill.You know what I mean?
04:33Right, right.It was like the music was clean.The speakers were louder.And it was all rushing towards this new musical aesthetic.But it would have maybe gotten there on the chronic.had not the low-in theory, you know, come out.It's true.And the chronic was built completely differently,
04:47and we do have an episode about that.You should go back and listen to nothing but a G-thingabout this record.But an important thing is that because Dre's moving awayfrom sampling where a lot of that crackle resides,a lot of the dust and dirt of the past, the 70s,the sound of that is baked into the recording.Since he's interpolating,
05:03and of course the use of the specific instrumentsto record the baselines, et cetera,the sum total of how that record gets madeis a big part of where this clean aesthetic is coming intobecause they're moving away from relying so much,I should say, on samples.It's not completely without sample.No, that's a really good point.
05:20By the way, anytime there's like a big moment in pop cultureor music or whatever, there's always a, it's usually a reaction to something,and then there's the reaction to the reaction.Yeah.And at this time, when the West Coast goes so clean and so big and so bright,New York as a cityand as a culture in itselfresponded with a darker
05:41and more visceral.We're gritty.We're going to show you how gritty we are.Midnight Marauders came out on the exact same dayas entered the 36 chambers.That's so crazy to me.I love that fact.At the time that I heard that album,
05:50I'll never forget it.It's one of those clear memories in my past.I remember a friend played it,and it was so dark,and it was so un James Brown sampley.Like, I remember turning him and saying,is this hip-hop?How the fuck you get enslaved man boots?
06:06Newbie crooks.I'm fucking up.M.C.Chops, I break blooms.Like, that's how different Wu-Tang sounded.But Wutang wasn't the only person who was going in that darker,dustier direction.You know, like artists like Diamond D and the psychotic neurotics.
06:22Artists like On.I love the name.Oh, Diamond D.Oh, they have one of the greatest songs.I went for mine.The album comes out.Everyone says, oh, man, take that record off.Don't waste my time.
06:33Due to that fact, I went for mine.And then you've got artists like Daz Effects.You know,Riggity row.They literally say, we're bringing it up from the sewer.And you've got Black Moon, you know, with such classic songs as I Got You Open.A Q-Tip being in New York is digesting all this too.And he's letting it be known more and more that he is a producer of his music.
06:59So whereas we thought it was all Ali Shaheed Muhammad before,we suddenly knew the Q-Tip was a producer into his own right.He's got one of my favorite songs of this period.Another sort of moody jazz classic off of the Iomatic record,and that is One Love by Nas.You was my nigger when push came to shopOne loveOne love
07:18No I'm trying to wrap my head aroundTell me your thoughts on thisHow?Because I know that isBoombapBut why is that boom bap?Like tell me like what areI'm trying to find the characteristic
07:35Is it the snare soundWhere the kicks are kind of stutteringIt's kind of 95 BPM-ishPlus or minusSo like how would you defineReal quickI would say the boom bapIs specifically
07:46sort of likeWhat they were doing in the late 80sAnd early 90sKeras 1 has a whole album called Return of the Boom Bap,which means just that the return of the real hard beats and real rap.And musically, how would you define it musically?It's really just that sort of like skip step beat that you hear.So that you hear.
08:10That you hear on DJ premiere tracks and Pete Rock tracks.And I always said that like, you know, if you were walking in New York,I don't think it's an accident that you can walk to the pace of like about a 92, a 95.So if you have like the really bad Sony Walkman headset and it's like, it's like,it makes sense that like the West Coast music where people in cars had like all these really low bases and like all these like,because you were in a stereo cube, you know, you could make the music sound great.But this is at a time when like I remember those headphones.Like you were fancy if you could afford like the Iwa.
09:04if you could afford that IWa tape deck.Like, you know, if you were walking with that one,but it made sense and it was more about like sort of a muffled drum soundwith like a kick.Yeah, the production is part of it too.That is the boom-bap.Ironically, like, it was always kind of fun and easy to mix hip-hopfor the most part in the 90s because most hip-hop was at the slowest 85
09:28and at the fastest, like, around 99.There was not a lot of BPM range back then.Totally.I was just going to say I went through the low-end theory and midnight marauders and just kind of skipped really quickly to get BPMs.And it is like 85% 95BPM.If you ever take maybe one or two throughout both of these records.The average bounce meter point of your midnight area up meet.And I think that's a big part of it is to your point, the walking pace.
09:58I think that's a part of it.After the success of the low-in theory, Quest is under the gun.They know that they have to come back with something that is just as good, if not better,because it's hard to follow up something as belovedas the low-end theory.But they've been digesting everythingthat's been going on in the culture too.And I think a prominent example of this
10:16is the track on Midnight Maradais called, I'm just going to call it Sucker for nowbecause I don't feel like using a whole bunch of N-wordsand talking about it.But it is Q-Tip rapping about his relationshipwith the N-word.And he does it like in a very nuanced,very mature way.
10:35Right.As I try not to say itBut my lips is like the co-op as I start to spray itMy lips is like the o-op as I start to spray itMy lips is like the o-wopI actually sympathize with Tip hereI was raised in a householdThat was not an acceptable word
10:52And yet in the early 90sA movie came out called Ministers SocietyIt was extremely laden with the N-wordAnd it was I think somebody countedIt was used like something like 170 timesOr something like thatI think we all saw itthere was all this talk about the NWACP.
11:08We're going to bury that word forever.And Q-Tip, you know, I was kind of with them because I, to this day, I still don't really use it.But Q-Tip was saying, look, the youth are on a different page with this word than the old folks,and I'm going to write a song about it.Again, this is not the Q-Tip who is recording music at the footsteps of a public enemy or an ex-clanor all the, you know, very Afrocentric, you know, let's take this to the Motherland type singers.He's rapping now at a time when the West Coast has clearly no problem using that word.And he's almost trying to find his own lane, a unique to New York lane, on how to use that word.
11:48Not being from New York at the time, I didn't realize.I thought he said, my lips is like a doo-op.Yeah, it's like I'm singing it.But it's actually he says, U-WOP, which was a street turn for an Uzi.That's why he says, like an U-WOP as I start to spray it.Oh, okay, like a machine gun.Also, I think someone online was like,Aruop, that's very true.
12:08A Uop can also be when you roll two blunts together.Okay.But, yeah, it's like, it's complicated stuff, you guys.I appreciate now, even more than then,the amount of nuance, he says,I start to flinch as I tried not to sing.Yeah, that's really great.My lips is like a luop,
12:22as I start to spray it.This is like unrelated to the lyrical content,but I'm so glad you played thisbecause it's scratched,I was able to scratch a musical itchthat have been bugging me,which is.Which is that that is a jazz,
12:34it's a sample from a jazz standard.Yeah.Standard now, I suppose.When I was in high school, we played it.And it's been on my mind for years,and I couldn't think of it.Because when it's an instrumental,as we've talked about before,
12:45harder to find instrumentals.When you don't have a lyric to search on.When you don't have a lyric,when you don't have the Shazam for the recording.We didn't have the internet like that,but it's had that damn baseline.Yeah.So the song is Red Clay by Jack Wilkins.
12:56Let's hear a little snippet of it.Modal, much slower.Great track.And man, that's taking me back to high school days.I will say this.I'm so glad you bring that up.We didn't have the Internet so we couldn't immediately know what sample there was.That's going to come into play later because there are going to be a lot of debates at the lunch table
13:20about what the chorus of electric relaxation says.There were a lot of really fun, intriguing theories.But we had no way to know back then.We had no way to contact the band back then.What a wonderful era we live in that on this show.Hasn't the Internet made the world better, everybody.It's clearly made the world a much better place.of you who don't know, we will be revealing later in the show exactly what the lining.
13:40Absolutely.So on the song vibes and stuff, on the low-in theory Q-tip refers to himself as the Midnight Marauder,which is where they get the title of this album.Intertextuality.I love it.One thing referring to another thing.Absolutely.And then you come to this wonderful album where it's not just, you know, the painted figure
13:58that's been sort of a staple of Tribe Call Quest albums, but it's also, you've got thesepictures of all these great hip-hop friends, if you will. I love that, yeah.Of a tribe called. Like a Who's Who? You got the Beastie Boys. You got Busta, you got De LaSoul,you got Grandmaster Flash, Ice, T, Jazzy J. But I want to get into the musical direction of thisalbum. What can you tell us? What can you translate for us from Bob Power? What's going on?There's kind of a mission statement coming out of the low-end theory in terms of the sonic directionfor the new record that they went into. And it's interesting because Bob Power talks about howLike literally, Q-Tip and Ali came to him and they said they wanted to be more of a gritty street style.
14:40Quote unquote, don't clean things up as much.Can I just say real quick, the first time I had ever heard the name Bob Power.And it really had it stuck.He gets mentioned on low-in theory, but it was really this line from a Midnight Marauder song.It's one of my favorite on the album.It's called The Chase Part 2.Yeah.That's a face of trouble.
14:59Make my shit sound clear, clear.That's his real voice, too.Yeah.Yeah.answering.I like that you can actually hear Bob Powers say, yeah?Yeah.I like that he's part of the lore.
15:08He's part of the canon.He's like, he's one of the tribe.That was how I knew Bob Power.As we discussed on the scenario episode,this is part two of a two-parter.Please go back and listen to Part One if you haven't already.What that actually means in terms of like the musical mix is Bob Power was doing a lot ofreally early, like innovative things to the samples to get them to all sit in the mix.
15:28And that includes getting rid of some of the quote-unquote dirt and grime from the samples.Right.So I think what that means is that Q-Tip and Ali were like, don't do that this time.We wanted to be a little more gritty.We like some of the things that you've just been talking to us about Diallo.We like some of these sounds that are dirty and gritty in New York and Woot-A.I think Q-Tip had an interest in the streets of New York because it's not long after this,he produces a song for Mob Deep's second album, the infamous album.
15:53So I always thought that he had a fascination with the streets.Coincidentally, also since Low-in Theory, US3 has come.out. Okay. We talked about it. We don't need to play it. But we talked about it.Also, one of our favorite groups, Stigable Planets has come out.And by the way, they were, I feel like they were not embraced by the native tonguesand by the general New York community, even though they were from, you know, Brooklyn.And they should have. But hugely embraced by the two of us. But they were also embracedby the mainstream. And I think that just as Q-tip is listening to what Dre is putting out,
16:25I think he's also rejecting some things. He's also rejecting some things that he had a clearinfluence on. Oh, that's interesting. You know, and I think that.that's something that I haven't ever read that anywhere.I don't know anybody.That's anybody's theory.But my theory is that it's not even just about Q-Tip embracing the streets.It's also about him saying, no, you know what?We just went off on Hammer.
16:45It would be very easy for us to be the next US3or to blow up like diggible planet's data after the rebirth of cool.No, we're going more street.We're going more in the underground direction.That is a really interesting theory that I think I'm subscribing to as you're saying it,especially with the US3 thing because that was very commercial.and to my ears even at the time,I was a fan of both
17:05Google Planets and Tribal Quest, but alsoAcid Jazz, which is this sort ofwhite, British, electronicside of the same thing. Musically, extremelyrelated, but it's more of a Londonunderground dance floor thing. They have a lotin common. We've talked about this on the MassiveAttack episode, but it's a little
17:21bit, maybe to his ears,because to my ears it was corny. Us threewas corny at the time. And maybeQ-Tip was thinking, you knowwhat have I begot?But I think also that that sithe could kill some good things to do because I think that I remember when I got to school and I was like, why did New Yorkers not mess with Diggable planets as much as we did down the south?And for whatever reason, some of the New Yorkers who embraced Nause and Mobb Deep and Tribe felt like Digible felt like some kind of like concoction, like some record label concoction.So they did.
17:54I feel like over time they grew to embrace at least two-thirds of that group.But at the time, there was some tension there.know what that is. And I'd be curious to talk to Q-Tip or any of my friends in New York about whatthat is. But I digress. We're talking about electric relaxation in Mid-Ni Marauders. Much of theconcept and planning of Mid-Ni Marauders was done in Fife's grandma's basement. So I want to sayone of this episode's unsung heroes are hip-hop basements.Nana Fife. On our Outcast episode, you will know that the dungeon family and organized noiseworked out of a basement. And that's where Alcalfiqa.
18:30came to record and so many people come to record.There's something about basements.There's something about the non-rushed nature of a bunch of teenagers and people in their 20sjust sitting around, you know, smoking, playing video games.That's the best.What a creative environment it is.How incredible is that.This album took some time to record.
18:48You know, we always talk about those albums that just get pushed out like immediatelyand they're great.This is not one of those albums.So they're coming up with all these ideas in the basement.And yes, they recorded this album at Battery Studios per usual, but it's not.the basement. It's in the basementwhere the B for electric relaxation wasmade. You know, Five is quoted saying,
19:06I didn't even say hello to my grandmotheror whoever was in the house. I was just like,hold on. And I went downstairs,and that's a rude. And he was like,yo, what the hell is that? And Q-Tibwas like, yo, that shit is crazy, right?And it just became what it is now.Five says is one of his absolute
19:22favorite Tribe Call Quest songs. Iwill say it's a DJ, because this is theperfect place to say it. I love thesong. Yeah. There's a littlecue tip at the very beginning of the song that makes the song extremely hard to mix in.If you don't know what you're doing, it took me a while to realize that that was not the onebecause, you know, they usually try to help a DJ out.You know what I mean?
19:52They usually were like, hey, the first thing you hear is the one.But Q-Tiv is going to be cute and be like, and so a lot of DJs, we had a lot of troublemixing that song at first.I know someone would go straight to the snare and just scratching the snare where they knewit came in.Yeah.But this was not always the easiest song to mix.We're going to get into this when we get into the stems.
20:11There's something really unpredictable about this song.There's several things musically happening that make it unpredictable.And we're going to talk about what those specific things are.But keeping you kind of off-kilter like that is part of what makes this song so special.All right.When we come back, we'll dive into electric relaxation.And we're going to hear why one element of this song is one of the most mind-blowing samples that you've ever heard.And my man here is going to kind of recreate it live for us.
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24:40you can find Manscape at a store near you.Stay fresh this season.for everyone's sake.Level up your grooming game today.Welcome back to One Song.Before we get into the stems, as we do,let's talk about some splits.Okay, these are some fun splits.
24:56Tribe Called Quest gets half of the publishingon this song.Yay!They're doing a little bit betterthan anybody who ever dealt with Steely Dan.So Q-Tip, Fife, and Alicia He-Jonesare sharing 50%, interestingly,foreshadowing.
25:10The other 50% goes to a gentlemancalled Ronnie Foster.Who does not?Oh.Who does not appear?on this song. Uh-huh. That's the shocking thing. But we will get into that shortly,and I will explain to you why. Oh, yeah, I'm dying to hear that because they did bringhim into some sessions. Interesting how these things work out. And,
25:27you know, it's just the nature of publishing and the nature of copyrights that these strangethings take place. I will be introducing a new concept. I don't think it willtake on in the same way that interpolation has taken on, but it is my hope that ahandful of people will start using a new term that I will be using shortly.There's some foreshadowing. All right. Let'sget into the music. What sample are we starting with? I'm imagining the drums. So the beatderives from a sample of a song called Outside Love by Brethren from 1970. So let's hear that.So there's our beat. Let's just hear where it goes from there. It's always fun to do in the original
26:02song. It's very New Orleans fun. We're getting a lot of meters vibe out of that.I like that. That's great. That's breath right. Play just a tiny bit more. I just want to hear what he wassinging about. You want to hear what he? He hooked you. That is the bluesiest blues.song that we're ever blown out of somebody's mouth.Now it's on blues notesgoing on right there.Sing out the blues.I'm singing out the blues.
26:42Just hanging on this note.That was some bluesy stuff.That's a great breakbeat.But those are our drums.What's going on with the bass and the keys here?Listen, here's where things get interesting.Because just two years ago, we talked about on the lastepisode how sampling was still
26:58an art form where in order to have longersamples, in order to have multiple samples,in order to have them all line up.There's a lot of work that Bob Power,the unsung hero of the last episode,and perhaps one of the unsung heroes of this one as well.The engineer who worked with a tribe called Questto make this track happen.
27:14Sampling times since then have gotten long.And Ali Shahid Muhammad and Q-Tip are both,I think, starting to use different toolsthat enable them to start bringing their sample visions to life ahead of timeand start experimenting with what goes with what slightly differently.So what's cool about this,when I went through, and I told you,I recreated.
27:33I tried to put my head spacein what Q-Tip was doingto chop up these samplesto make them work.It's really interesting.He was able to do new thingsthat he couldn't dojust two years earlier.
27:43So one thing he didon the other major sample,which is a song by,I'll play it for you firstand then we'll talk about it,break it down.The song is called Mystic Brew.It's by Ronnie Foster.
27:53Oh, yeah, this is a good one.1972.And I got to say the album title.It's from the album,two-headed Freep with a P.This is one of those songsbecause it's sampled a lot.Love that song.
28:09Love that song.So he took that loopand he also took this loopfrom the intro.Yep.And then that same songand pretty much the same partof that song
28:22gets reusedin this J. Cole's song.You gotta expect to sip juicefrom the forbidden fruitand get loose.And by the way,Madlib has also used that sampleso his childish Gambino.
28:34Yeah.I think it's one of those thingswhere it's so,personally, I think it's so iconicfrom the tribe.version, yes.That when other people use it in these other versions, it's meant to be a tip of the hat to try.I love that.
28:47All right, so let's talk a little about the Ronnie Foster sample here.Ronnie Foster, by the way, fun fact, yet another musician who started working in clubsat age 15, playing in a strip club.Not unlike George Benson, who he worked with.Where are these clubs?I don't want to go.I want to shut them down.And interestingly enough, speaking of George Benson, he also worked with George Benson.
29:09he was on the album, Breezen.Go back in the store George Benson episode.Huge it.So now let's get into a couple things.First of all, who we're hearing on the track.And then I'm going to play you how the track was chopped up very innovatively.So I mentioned there's two different loops, the bass only, which sounds like this.So Q-tip slowed that down a little bit, so it would match the breakbeat and pitched it down as well.
29:37So I'll play those things against each other in the mix with the break beat.You know what's interesting about that?it actually sounds like it's a little bit quantized, like lined up, right?Like when you play it back to back like that,the Tribe Call Quest version does seem like it's hitting on the beatmore than the sample.But I want to come back to something you said in the last episodethat I think really applies here.
30:06It's one of the reasons I love Midnight Marauders,I love electric relaxation,I love lyrics to go.It's this idea that there is a loop,but it's not quite lined up with,It doesn't restart on the one just like perfectly.Like there's just a little bit of a mental gymnastics.There's an off-kilter thing going on because it's not a two- or a four-bar loop.
30:28It's a three-bar loop.Yes.So interestingly throughout this song, that third bar, the fact of it being three bars,means that every now and then you'll have something because the vocals and the lyrics arein groups of eight and 16.Yes.So there are things where it's happening in an unexpected place.And that contributes to the off-kilter feeling you have.
30:46Absolutely.And the other thing that's doing that is that those.six chords across the three bars.It feels, it's another kind of infinite loop situation like we were talking aboutbecause they never resolve.The chord changes, now, I'm not going to get too deep into music theory.No, go deep, bro.Go deep.
31:02The technical chords you're hearing are, it's like a six and then a flat five,sus four, et cetera.I won't name all of them, but none of them are a one.And there are ways that non-tonic one chords can be other chords that feel like a one.But to my ear, we never quite go home.We're always kind of going in a circle.Right?So as we cycle through these six chords,
31:22and I'll play them again and listen for this,it always feels like it's going to the next thing.And that next thing is never a stable home base.It's always coming back to the beginning again.You can never go home.You can never go home.And even if you did, it's not stable.In my mind, it's like the audio coming.
31:38I keep thinking of like an Escher, you know, portraitwhere the stairs, the staircases that keep winding around forever.I think of like a circuit board where like the wires are all going tounexpected places.That's what my brain is doing when I hear it.Let's hear it again and listen for that.So here is the other loop that was sampled,the full loop from the Ronnie Foster song,
31:59and just listen for the non-going homeness.The unresolvedness, I should say.It doesn't never gets to that one chord of the tonic.That first chord sort of becomes like a home chord in a way because you're expecting it,but it doesn't, it's still, I'm not, I'm moving around.That's not the natural place where it should end.It feels like an earthquake.I'm not really.
32:26feeling safe and stable.I feel like, if I may,while we're in the midst of talking about electric relaxation,I want to play a little bit of lyrics to gobecause here's where you've gottwo or three samplessort of operating the same thing,and once again, you can never go home.
32:42Let's check out.And by the way, listen out for the mini Ripperton notewhen she hits that whistle note.Oh, I can't wait.Q-Tip took that whistle note,and he extended it out so there's just like this through linethrough the whole song.You'll hear what I'm talking about.
32:56This is off the same album, Midnight Marauders.This is lyrics to go.You hear that keyboard.That is, I'm feeling very unstable.But it's like, it intoxicatingly unstable.Like it intoxicates you.Like it intoxicates you, makes you feel warm at the same time.And if you're listening through your headphones, you do feel those low ends.
33:18I think the individual things on their own may have different emotional qualities,but the genius of how they come together.How they all put together.That's what Bob always said about Q-Tip and Ali.He was like, they came in knowing they wanted this and that and this,but when you put them all on top of each other,you're going to accomplish something that doesn't exist in the universe.And we're about to hear something from electric relaxation
33:38that does something similar,and that couldn't have been done in quite the same way just two years earlier.But before we get to that, I do want to point out that there are some quote,this is my new catchphrase that will not work.I'm sure as a catchphrase.Just try whispering.I'm going to try whispering.Okay.
33:52Sample phantoms.Sample phantoms.What do we think of it?Sample Phantoms.I don't think it's a sophomore slump.I think this is going to take off.Sample Phantoms to me, because I mentioned before,that Ronnie Foster, it's his track,
34:06and he's half of this song's publishing.But you're not actually hearing...He plays the organ on the song,but if you'll notice from what the sample was,there was no organ in it.What there is in the song is almost every other performer on the song.You're mainly hearing George Duvier on double bassmixed with Gordon Edwards on regular bass.
34:23Gordo.Those are two bases combined together,doubling the line.line, which gives us an additional...A double bass and a bass, triple bass.So on bass, we have those two gentlemen, and on guitar, we have Gene Berticini, and on vibes,we have George Devins, and on harp, which we might hear in there, I'm not sure.Eugene Bianco.
34:41I like to think Eugene Bianco is on harp on a lot of hip-hop song.He could be.Hip-hop harp is underrated.But because none of them are considered songwriters, those are all musicians who were on the daypaid for session work, work for hire.They're not names you would necessarily know.So when I...I don't know any harpist, so I definitely wouldn't know those names.
34:59So to me, this reminds me of a few episodes,not Lisa which is the Doja Cat episode,where Deon Warwick's voice is in the sample,but because she's not in the publishing,she's sort of a sample, like a musical,like a musical phantom is kind of the ideathat I'm, like, thinking about here.There's these musicians who you hear in a sample,
35:16but their name isn't credited,they aren't getting paid,but they are prominently used year and year outon multiple songs that sample them.So there's something just really to think aboutwith this sort of disconnect between copyrightand what actually happened musically.So the last sample, this one was so fun for me
35:32to try and recreate.So there's one more sample.I'll play you the sourceand then I will show you how it got chopped up.It's pretty incredible.And again, this is a capabilitythat just two years earlierwould have been unheard of.
35:44Almost impossible.It would have been witchcraft.It would have been witchcraft, I tell you.Witchcraft.This is Dreams from Ramsey Lewiscall back to the Earthwind and Fire episodewhere Maurice Whitehad formerly before Earth, When Fire formed,
35:57was part of the Ramsey Lewis Trio.That's right.But he left before this song got recorded.This is Dreams, 1973.This is the middle of the song.I will say I'm legitimately stumped.Where is that in the song?Let me break it down for you.
36:20So first of all, there's two different soundsthat came from that,which get used to sort of punctuate the songin very different ways.And actually, the mini Riperton sampleyou played a second ago.He treats it a little bit similarlyas a fraction of a sound that becomes something longer in its repetition,
36:36but I'll just play it for you.So here's the original piece.So from that little fragment comes this smaller fragment.That's it.Oh.I'll play it again.So the first way he took that little tiny moment, barely a second.Yeah.
36:53He pitches it up four.Okay.And then that becomes a repeated element that sounds like thiswhen it gets looped together.Now I think I know what it is.That's fun.And when I put the beat next to it, it sounds like this.That is crazy.
37:20And there's a second part of that same thing, which he also used.Here it is.Here's where it came from just to prepare your ears.That a little piece of what you're about to hear is what got used.Yeah.Here is that little WAP part isolated.Pitch that up plus four as well.And it sounded like this.
37:41And then put that in every three bars with a little delay behind it.And it sounds like this.Let me give it to you with the beat.Yeah.Here it comes again.That is so fun because until you use the word pitch,I had no idea where we were going with that.But then when you did it with the little like weird chime thing or whatever that thing is.
38:13The first element, yeah.That was when I immediately knew that the,I knew the way that.That's fantastic.And by the way, there's a part of me, and I've said this on another episode, it's like,why didn't Q, why didn't Q.Why didn't Q.Just bring somebody into the studio to actually play something that sounds like that?
38:31Like, you don't have to worry about clearing the sample,possibly playing some belligerent boomer, 80% of your, 80% of the money.It is risky.Don't sample it.So a part of me loves that.Yeah.Because from an artistic point of view, it's like going to the ocean, grabbing a squid,killing the squid, taking the black ink in its body, and painting something?
38:52First, just going down to the store and just buying some black paint.But it's like, no, man, we've freaking found this weird jazz album.We killed the squid, you know?Absolutely.And it's part of the artistic process, being on the art, like the making side of it, as you know, from experience.Sometimes what you put into something, there's something personal about it.It's a choice.It might be a record that has some significance to him.
39:12I'm thinking back to our Lady Gaga episode.Which was not even that long ago.It wasn't that long ago, so it doesn't take me much to think.about it. That's how big this brain is. She does this verbally and vocally and melodically.She'll bring things in like, Mama, Mama. Or in her new song, which references the Susie and theBanshee song on Abra-Cadabra. For her, it's pleasurable to bring in references to things that havemeaning to her outside of the song. It starts to build up with the music, with the lyrics. All of itis a statement about who you are as an artist. So I think making choices, finding something also the
39:43buried treasure, like you're saying. Like there's something that is unexpected in this tiny pieceof a song that you've brought outand made something completely transformativeout of it. And made it this smalllittle hidden treasure. It's so small.It's so small, but it does so much.Let me play it for you finally in the mix.These are all my recreated stems,
40:01by the way. So they are close, but not quitethe exact final thing. But when youadd back that Mystic brewsample, it sounds like this.So that's a beat.That's awesome. Two bar loop,three bar loops, excuse me, of the Mystic brew.And then those two sort of
40:24strange Ramsey Lewis fragments, like not even an entire, it's like less than half a second.It's great. It doesn't need to be brilliant, but it just did.And it sounds unique. Nothing else could sound like that.Nothing else could, yeah, you know, if they tried to create it with, you know, Eugene Bianco,the hip-hop harpist. By the way, his album should definitely be called hip harp, right?Hip-Harp, yes. I love that.You could try and recreate that with the hip-hop harpist, but it wouldn't sound the same. It was worth it.All right, it wouldn't be hip-hop unless we talked about some vocals. So it wouldn't be,
40:54the same without so many classic lines.Like, you've got one of myfavorite openings to a verse ever.I like a brown yellow border recitation.With the Zulu Nation,we can get down.Let's not the booths like the group H town.Put yourself
41:12at a time machine. And imagine that youare in a hip-hop partyor a college party or a barlike in 1993. Like, when hesaid that, like he saidit so clearly that, like, within theweek, the DJ was already taking out all the music and the whole crowd.It was like communal.
41:31It was communal madness.The group H-Town does not give enough shoutouts in classic hip-hop tracks.You remember them?Tell me about the group H-Town.I know very little.H-Town was a great R&B group.And their number one hit was knocking the boots, which was 90 slang for, for bump and uglies.For making whoopee.
41:52Oh, man.Let's play a little snippet of.Rockin' The Boots.There's so many lyrics in this song that we could do an entire podcast about.On the iconic nature and the cultural nature of.Yes.Or just breaking down like what they're referencing in verse 3, Q-Tips says,Stronger than Pride, stronger than Teflon.
42:16I mean, stronger than Pride is Chate.Yeah.Also, he follows that up with, by the way, my name's Malik,the five-foot freak.It reminds me of his other line on this album where he says,when's the last time you heard a funky diabetic?Like, I feel like Fife is like a super underwereck.as an MC.
42:33It's amazing that they didn't want himon the first album.But also be...The self-deprecating humor is insane.He's the self-deprecating king.He's the king.He calls himself a five-foot freak.He says that he's a funky diabetic.
42:43Like he has no problem.And I feel like that's where the humorof Tribe really comes through on their recordsbecause Jerobe's not saying much.He's saying a lot in the studio.He's not saying much on the albums.I feel like Five is saying things to make his friends laugh.And that's part of what makes it fun and funny
42:59and to keep things a little bit light,even as the world around them is going dark.Fife has another song, which is all him.It's only his song.Eight million stories.It has a very dark jazz sample.I don't have jack to wear.You know, I got to look dipped in the fresh to get.
43:16I found something so I ain't.I think I caught up on the phone.And he's talking, you know, he's using sort of like the rapper's storytelling voice.You know, like there's all kinds of dark moments on this album.And yet there are these moments like, my name is Malik the Five Foot Freak.and we would be remiss if we didn't mention possibly the mostyou know historic humorous line on thisalbum maybe but definitely on electric relaxation
43:40I'm going to ask you to play it it comes in on the fifth versethat's right TikTok they used to do five verses on hip-hop songson the fifth verse I think it starts with if your mom don't approvethen I'll just elopeThat's such an iconic line.It's such an iconic line.It hits harder for us for like former New Yorkers.I was living in New York.
44:10It means something to us slightly different.Siemens furniture was furniture you could afford.Okay.But it is obviously a double entendre play on the word Siemens furniture.Can you explain the double entendre to us?Not today.Okay.I also love this part of the line because he says,
44:24Shahee, Fife, and the Extra P, Stacey, Stacey, Beatle, PJ, and my name.N-L-G. Extra P,I don't know that we'll ever really get to do an Extra PLarge Professor episode of this show,but the main source as a groupand Large Professor, aka Extra P, as a producer,he's in on these Midnight Marauders sessions,and he is one of my favorite hip-hop producers of all time.
44:49If you want to go back and listen to Main Source,please feel free to do so.But just right now, please indulge me.I want to play because he's in on these Midnight Marauderssessions. I want to play my favorite remix of his of all time.It's actually his remix to Commons song Resurrection.This is the X-R-P remix. Enjoy this audible goodness.And now finally, let's talk about the chorus.
45:18The chorus that has confounded people ever since the dayelectric relaxation came out.Relax yourself, girl. What? What did you hear at the time?I actually can't remember anymore what the wrong thing is.Well, you want to learn the correct thing.Yeah, that's actually probably what it was.That's probably right.Mommo, mum, mum, mom.
45:37I'll tell you, I can remember exactly what I was when we got into the biggest debatebecause I thought he was saying, relax yourself, girl, please stop playing.That's plausible.Yeah, relax yourself, girl, please stop playing.My friend Qualey, shout out to Qualey.I know he listens to the show.He was like, no, he says, relax yourself on a preset plan.What?
45:55That's what he heard of here.He's so confident with that.pre-step. Oh, he said it so confidently. He said it so confidently that like literally, I thought he hadwritten somebody at Jive or wherever and like had gotten the definitive answer. What even is that?Is that like a like a burner phone, like a preset, what is a preset plan? I don't know.I don't know. Maybe it was like, hey, it's like when you're like rolling, when you're sailing downthe river and letting the river take your way of you? The preset plan is what God has set out for us.Yeah. That makes sense. But here's your definitive answer, everybody. The chorus of the song forever forward
46:27and this has been verified, is relax yourself, girl, please settle down.Relax yourself, girl, please settle down.We're going to play the chorus for you right now.Train your ears to hear what he's actually saying.All right, Jal.So what do you think the legacy of electric relaxation is?Man, I don't know.I think the legacy of electric relaxation is twofold.
46:59I think, one, it permanently cemented this idea that a tribe called,quests were artists working in the field of hip hop, if that makes sense.Yeah.Like, they're just artists.And think about it.Like, not only did they avoid the sophomore slump with the low-in theory, you know,which I think most people would agree was a step up from people's instinctive travels,somehow they were able to follow up an album as beloved as the low-in theory with an album
47:28pretty much almost equally loved, maybe loved more by others.Right.Midnight Marauders, that is an incredibly hard thing to do.Like the fact that they were so locked in that they were able to come back two years laterto a different world and release an album that didn't flop is insane.No, seriously, it's insane.And so many of their compatriots and colleagues from the class of 91, if you want to call it that,weren't around as early as 94.
47:57They were just off the scene.They were irrelevant.They were off the grid.Midnight Marauders, to me, its legacy is that it's,cemented the legacy of a tribe called quest.I think that's perfectly put it.And I said it was twofold because I also think it has the effect of because it submittedtheir legacy and because it showed, hey, these are artists working in the field of hip-hop.
48:15It made it okay for other artists to come along and to take some of what they had done sonicallyand run with it or take the mantle of we are artists first and run with it.It's not by accident that someone like Skeff, who we talked about a lot in the firstepisode because he's there at the beginning of their journey.By the end of the 90s, he's working with artists like The Roots.He's working with artists like Mo Steff.Bob Power is working with The Roots and Erica Badu and all these artists.So like not just a tribe called Quest.
48:44And sadly, Fyves' health started to affect their ability to stay relevant into the 2000s, obviously.But from Q-Tip to Alicia Heim Muhammad, Bob Power, Skeff Ansel, all the periphery of the NativeTongues crew and all those people, they were all able to leave a legacy that made it okay.for the next generation of artists,Mostef, outcast,Talib Kuali,they were able to carry that mantleall the way into the 2000s of Mion.
49:10So kudos to them.Their legacy is safe.There would be no J. Cole.There would be no Kendrick Lamarin the same way as we think of them nowwithout the Tribe Call Quest.I think that was perfectly said.And I think just kind of
49:22encapsulating both of these episodesthat we spent two episodestalking about Tribe Called Questscenario was this last episodeand then this one being electric relaxationacross these two songs and across these two records.For me, just like looking musicologically into the stemsand thinking about what happened, how they were able to make it,
49:39and what did they do that was innovative and interesting.I'm really struck by how sampling comes such a long wayin just these two to three years between these records.And in these two songs, you can actually see it happening.There are capabilities in the second song in Electrical relaxationthat they simply couldn't do two years earlier.It blows my mind that you're able to get these little micro fragmentsand line them up and have these interesting adjustments made to where they sit in time.
50:05And add to that, the whole jazz thing we've been talking about for both episodes,where they're making choices about what to use sampling-wisethat are really unusual and unorthodox in the chord changesand even the instrumentation.They're really making unusual choices, but somehow at all,you don't really hear that until you start investigating at a micro-level.It just sounds like great hip-hop.I think you've nailed it.
50:28I think it's all about change.Yeah.The technology changes, what they're rapping about changes,and the world that they're rapping, too, has changed.I think that there's so much change between these two wonderful classic albums,the low-in theory and Midnight Marauders,that how could we not take two episodes to dissect all the change that happens between them.So I tried was a double on one song.
50:48We had to do it.Had to do it.We had to do it.Okay, luxury, it's time for one more song.This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden jam with you,The One Song Nation.And with each other, you go first.All right, well, as I've talked about many times on this show, I'm a big fan of dub reggae,
51:03and every now and then something comes across my path where I'm like,this is why I love this type of music.This is Dreadlock's Dub by Bullwacky's All-Stars.It is a rather mysterious 45 that I know nothing about, but I love how it sounds.And that's all that matters.This is everything to me.Really sparse, minimal.It's got some weird, cheap sounding synth at the top that I love.
51:33The fact that it's recorded on what sounds like my shoe,You know, like, I, Bullwackys.Pretty musical.So what's interesting about this song is it's actually Jamaican dub that comes out in New York.This is, Bullwackies was a guy called Lloyd Barnes, who moved from Jamaica to the New York area in the late 70s and made reggae that sounds like Jamaican reggae out of Jamaica, but right there on Long Island.Probably not that far away from where Q-Tip and everybody else was growing up and living.Oh, that's really cool.Interesting, yeah.
52:03And what year is that?I don't know much about it.My guess would be that this is a mid-70s track.It might be late 70s.But yeah, it's called Dreadlock song by Jaj-Joe.And can't find a lot of information about it, but I don't want to.I like how mysterious it sounds.I like that too.
52:20What about you, D'allel?What's your one more song this week?My one more song this week is out of bounds by Coastal Conrad and DLG.This is one that grew on me over the course of listening to it.And by the time I reached the end, I was like, wow, that's really cool.So I'm going to play a snippet, but really check out the whole song.This is out of bounds.I'm looking for the one.
52:44That's the one.One, two, two.I mean, it's a pretty epic song, and it's nice and chopped up.I feel like someone's squeezing, like, the entire band, the entire production.I love it.You know, admittedly, I was driving down the coast, and the song came on.I was like, oh, yeah, this is a banger.As always, if you have an idea for one more song,
53:07You can find us on Instagram and TikTok.You can find me on Instagram at Adialo and on TikTok at Diallo.You can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-X-Y and on TikTok at Luxury X-X.And one song officially has its own Instagram and TikTok.Go follow Add One Song Podcast for exclusive content and all the music debates that you've come to love.You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube right now.Just search for One Song podcast.We'd love it if you like and subscribe.
53:34And if you've made it this far, we think that means you like.this podcast. So pleasedon't forget to give us five stars.Leave a review and share with someone you thinkwould like it really helps keep the show going.All right, luxury, help us in this thing.I'm producer, DJ songwriter, andmusicologist Luxury, aka the sample
53:51phantom. And I'mactor-writer director and sometimes DJD'allel Rittle. And this is one song.We will see you next time. This episode wasproduced by Melissa Duanyasand Casey Simonson. Ourassociate producer is Jeremy Bimbo.Engineering for Marcus Homm and Eric Hicks.
54:07Additional production support from Razak Poykin.The show is seconded produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Eddings, Eric Wael, and Leslie Guam.
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