(From Escape album; 1984)
Damn, and the fella's beats are still ringing out 30 years later in 2014 on Yay Area rap songs and French rap blogger's vlogcasts too. That's the very definition of timeless rap music right there.
If you wanna know who Larry Smith is, read EttelThun's brilliant profile of him. If you wanna know some of his best tracks, then I gotchu here with 15 classics he produced, wrote, played on, or had some sort of hand in:
Kurtis Blow - The Breaks (1980)
Kurtis Blow - Hard Times (1980)
Orange Krush - Action (1982)
Jimmy Spicer - The Bubble Bunch (1982)
Jimmy Spicer - Money (Dollar Bill Y'all) (1983)
"Love Bug" Starkski - You've Gotta Believe (1983)
Run D.M.C. - Sucker M.C's (Krush-Groove 1) (1983)
Run D.M.C. - Hard Times (1984)
Run D.M.C. - Hollis Crew (Krush-Groove 2) (1984)
Run D.M.C. - Darryl And Joe (Krush-Groove 3) (1985)
Whodini - Friends (1984)
Whodini - Five Minutes Of Funk (1984)
Whodini - Freaks Come Out At Night (1984)
Whodini - One Love (1986)
One thing, though - I gotta disagree with some of the eulogies already flying around calling Larry "rap's first super-producer". Nowadays everybody wanna write like they got something to say, but nothin' comes out when they move their fingertips, just a buncha revisionism and motherfuckers act like they done forgot about Errol "Pumpkin" Bedward?
"Tough" by Kurtis Blow too
ReplyDeleteguvnor
ReplyDeleteIn hindsight, I definitely should have included Jailhouse Rap by The Fat Boys instead of One Love by Whodini.
ReplyDeletefeel sad
ReplyDeleteI count 3 top 50 rap songs of all time in this list: Money (Dollar Bill Y'all), Sucker M.C's, and 5 Minutes Of Funk.
ReplyDeleteHard Times has gotta be top 100 too.
"motherfuckers act like they done forgot about Errol "Pumpkin" Bedward?" REAL TALK.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about Pumpkin is that even the songs where he's replaying other people's records are incredible - Feel The Heartbeat sounds as good as the Taana Gardner original, and - whisper it - Rockin' It sounds even harder than Kraftwerk's The Man Machine.
ReplyDeleteThis true...Pumpkin was beyond his time
ReplyDeleteFacts....Pumpkin is hip hops first Super Producer..not Larry
ReplyDelete