Gotta Work



1. Fat Joe - Make It Rain (Remix) ft. Lil' Wayne, R. Kelly, Baby, T.I., Ace Mac & Rick Ross

2. Asian Dub Foundation - Free Satpal Ram

3, Killdahype - G-Boys

4. Amerie - Gotta Work

5. Lil' Mama - Lipgloss

6. Yelle - Je Veux Te Voir

7. Dizzee Rascal - Pussyole

8. Mark Ronson - Toxic ft. Ol' Dirty Bastard

9. Fabolous - Right Now + Later On

10. Girls Aloud - No Good Advice (Parental Advisory)

11. *NSYNC - Bye Bye Bye

12. Busta Rhymes - As I Come Back

13. Unklejam - Love Ya

14. The Black Ghosts - Any Way You Choose To Give It (Fake Blood Mix)

15. M.I.A. - XR2 (Tigerstyle Remix)

16. SebAstian - Head Off (Faex Remix)

17. Cee-Lo Green - Passion Fruit ft. Pharrell

18. Killdahype - Revolution (Original Mix)

19. Backstreet Boys - The Call (The Neptunes Remix) ft. Clipse

One of the first gigs I remember going to was the previously mentioned Asian Dub Foundation show I went to with George at The Garage in Glasgow in 2000. It was on their Community Music tour. It was a hell of a show, promoting a hell of an album. The band came out on stage and got themselves set up and as they launched into the first song of the night, Real Great Britain, every member of the band and every person in the audience jumped into the air in unison. This made it look like the floor had briefly dropped out from underneath us before rushing back up to meet us and then fell away again as we all leapt a second time together. It was startling and completely exhilarating.

The track here is from the earlier, sophomore album Rafi's Revenge which is also great. I haven't thought about the band much in recent years but hearing Free Satpal Ram is like catching up with an old friend. One that is overtly political, outspoken and angry. This old pal hasn't lost its edge. Its a political protest song demanding the release of a man imprisoned after being convicted of murder. Satpal Ram allegedly killed a man in self-defence during a fight in a restaurant in Birmingham in 1986. His mistreatment in every step of the judicial process was a matter of some controversy. This song is a furious call for justice and it bangs. Hard.

It's good to be reminded of forgotten gems like this and reminded of old favourites that you haven't heard for a while. Gotta Work is packed with these kinds of reminders for me. Unlike the other mixes I've talked about so far, this one doesn't really recall any specific times or people or places from my life. This one is really just about the music... man.

The only clues as to the timeframe that I'd have made it in are a handful of tracks that were very much of their moment. They shone brightly (for me at least) for a short spell before slinking off into the mists of passing time. I'm guessing early to mid 2007. I'd say that the title track, Amerie's quite sublimely funky RnB anthem about striving to achieve your goals and getting through the hard days, Gotta Work, would have just leaked when I burnt it to this CD-R. It still sounds amazing and I can't quite believe how underrated it is. Produced by One Up doing a mighty fine Rich Harrison impression it's all big blaring horns (sampled from Erma Franklin's cover of Hold On, I'm Comin'), clattering but snappy funk drums, break downs and a massive chorus. Its almost Crazy In Love/1 Thing good. Why did it not get appreciated? I honestly don't understand why it isn't still getting regular spins at RnB clubs everywhere. Maybe it is, just not at the ones I've been to. Maybe I'm just old and out of touch.

Anyway I hadn't forgotten that one but it was great to hear it again. Same goes for the opener, Fat Joe's ridiculous posse cut remix of Make It Rain. The dramatic Scott Storch beat is blessed by almost everyone involved bringing their A game. 

Kels hits a near all time high with the first verse. It's hilarious and brilliant and wrong on a multi- levelled basis. Everything you hope for and expect from an R. Kelly guestspot. The perfect logic of his 'I order one bottle, then I fuck with one model/Then I order more bottles, now I got more models' makes me chuckle every single time. Wayne was on a tear at this point and his contribution here was sub-par for him but at that time Mixtape Weezy at his worst was still way better than most at their best. Then a big shock with a Baby verse that isn't total shit which makes me think Wayne probably wrote it too. 

T.I. slays with his rapid fire young hustler tales and then the wild card of the bunch Ace Mac shows up, an unknown young latino rapper who more than holds his own in a room full of established heavyweights. Tip and Ace Mizzy both have similar kinds of flows on their respective 8 bars and it really suits the beat. Complicated, tricky and fast. They don't have much to say besides how much money and how many women they have but they do it a way that sounds glorious.

To close out the remix are two literal heavyweights; Rick Ross does his thing and that is rarely a bad thing. He keeps the momentum going and delivers some nice memorable rhymes. Solid. Fat Joe on the other hand is a real weak link on his own song. His verse lacks any real flow or cadence and is lazily tacked on the end. The momentum created by the quality prior to this verse means that it doesn't completely derail the proceedings. The fact that I still know the lyrics inside out tells you how often I listened to this tune back then. Epic stuff.

Long unplayed but ultimately unforgettable is Bye Bye Bye. Written and produced by the Swedish pop geniuses at Cheiron Studios it remains one of the best boyband songs of all time. British group 5ive must be gutted they passed on it. The production couldn't be more late 90's, I'm not mad at that. I'm also not mad at JC and Justin doing the majority of the heavy lifting on vocals (as they often did). The rest chip in though to make the harmonies soar.

It couldn't really be a compilation made by me since 1999 if it didn't feature at least one Neptunes production. This one has three. Their third appearance on this one comes right at the end with the appearance of another late 90's/early 2000's boyband. The original version of The Call is excellent, penned by the Swedish pop god Max Martin it was always going to be, but Pharrell and Chad took it and made it super weird and minimal and it is phenomenal. The Backstreet Boys sing verses about an ill-fated cellphone call, a dying battery and infidelity over a repeating vocal approximation of a ringtone, a deep baseline, typically snappy drums, a electronic synth bubbling that peeks in and out and a barely there guitar strum on the chorus. Added to this are a couple of guest verses by Pusha T and Malice of Clipse, the latter of which brilliantly/hilariously namechecks every member of the band.

The first Neptunes production on the tape is another one I remember well. It appears on Busta Rhymes' 2001 record Genesis and it uses a couplet from Busta's verse on A Tribe Called Quest's Scenario as a hook. As I Come Back is the kind of beat that makes your face screw up.and typifies what The Neptunes did so well and so prolifically between 1999 and 2004. Again, minimal and spacey, using weird sounds, in this case the bizarre pitched up, chipmunk-y sounding synth part, and always tailored to perfectly fit the artist. Busta goes wild and aggressive, roaring and growling his way across the lively instrumental, easily matching its energy.

When looking at the track listing I didn't at first recognise the second of the Virginia duo's beats; Cee-Lo Green's Passion Fruit with its Pharrell feature. As soon as it started though I realised that it is an early demo version of the track The Art Of Noise which appeared on Cee-Lo's Cee-Lo Green... Is The Soul Machine album. The final version is one of my absolute favourite Neptunes tracks, a funky, upbeat soul number and the demo doesn't vary much except for a little sample at the intro and the vocals for the chorus are missing. Pharrell's live drums on the beat are sweet and Cee-Lo does his thing; 'And god can truly work a miracle/Look at me isn't it obvious that I'm one'.

Elsewhere on the disc is Lil' Mama's Lipgloss which is not a Neptunes beat but does a quite convincing imitation of one. It is basically a High School Musical version of Grindin' by Clipse; over a sparse drums and claps only backing track Mama rhymes about her popularity at school and of course how poppin' her lipgloss is. She never lived up to the early promise of this ambitious and fun debut single unfortunately.

Also slightly indebted to The Neps but more to Prince and Funkadelic are Unklejam; a soul-funk trio who came and went in a brief timespan. Love Ya was catchy enough that the tune was easily recalled when I thought about it. Lyrically the thing is weak but the production and melodies and hooks still sound strong. Their album was really forgettable and it's not surprising that they didn't have longevity.

Built around the much used Yeah! Woo! Break, Dizzee Rascal's threatening Wiley diss track Pussyole (Old Skool) I had totally forgotten about until I saw its name on the disc. This is one of the last times Dizzee sounded this dangerous. I miss that Dizzee. This song is great, menacing but you want to dance.

Only two other of the tracks here were songs that I either just hadn't heard for a while or had forgotten they existed but upon seeing their titles they came instantly back to me. First Girls Aloud and their classic single No Good Advice. They really did have some belters these girls, Xenomania made sure of that. The version on this disc is the slightly sweary Parental Advisory one. The song isn't particularly enhance by the bad language to be honest.

The other one that had slipped my mind and which I couldn't even summon what it sounded like until the first few notes played was Mark Ronson's Ol' Dirty Bastard assisted cover of Britney's Toxic. I mean, I could have guessed what it was gonna sound like even if I hadn't heard it before in all honestly. 'It's probably gonna have horns on it. Lots of horns.' Big Baby Jesus references his classic Grammy moment in his verse, a verse that wasn't recorded for this song but ended up fitting it quite well. This all could have gone much worse than it ended up being.

All that remains from this disc are a handful of tracks that I had no idea what they were or what they would sound like even when the names of the acts were familiar. Killdahype for example; I would have bet that they would be some kinda Ed Banger-ish electro act, which they were, but I even as I listened to them I couldn't be sure I'd ever heard them before. I must have dug them at the time though as they have two tracks here. The second track Revolution is a slightly above average example of post-Daft Punk electro-house circa 2007. It has some personality and changes often enough to stay interesting. The earlier appearance by them however is more fun; G-Boys is a propulsive, driving tune that sounds like it should be from a 16-bit blast em up, side-scrolling, space adventure video game like Super R-Type or Metro if or something. The beat goes through a number of changes and there is a real progression and development in the tune. I'm really happy to have it back in my life.

Similarly, the heavy and abrasive Faex remix of of SebastiAn's Heads Off is dope. From that era of Ed Banger Records I find the more jagged without being too extreme stuff has held up the best and this one rides that line perfectly. And French electro-rapper Yelle is fun too, from the slightly brighter and more colourful side of that kind of electronic music from France at the time. Her verses sound good, I don't really know what she's saying but it sounds good. Maybe she has other good tunes. I should investigate.

The other two remixes left here fare less well. Tigerstyle don't do anything particularly interesting with an M.I.A. track that wasn't of particular note in the first place. It's fine, just nothing special. Same goes for a Fake Blood mix of Any Way You Choose To Give It by whoever The Black Ghosts were. There are much better examples of these kinds of remixes from that time but also much worse ones. Much much worse.

Much much much worse.

Finally we get to Fabolous and his Timbaland produced cut Right Now + Later On which is decent. I like it but am not in the least bit surprised that it faded from my memory, neither Tim nor Fab are nearly as inspired as they can be.

Like fleeting affairs or one night stands most of these songs were short moments in my life, some lasted longer than others, some had more resonance than others and some had slipped my mind entirely. I don't regret any of them and some of them it was really good to catch up with again. A few of them even good enough to start our thing up again.