Saturday 20 December 2014

Generic list post: R.I.P Larry Smith edition


Whodini - Featuring Grand Master Dee
(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 - Christmas Rappin' (1979)
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?

9 comments:

Dan said...

"Tough" by Kurtis Blow too

yeldarb said...

guvnor

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

In hindsight, I definitely should have included Jailhouse Rap by The Fat Boys instead of One Love by Whodini.

d said...

feel sad

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

I 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.

Hard Times has gotta be top 100 too.

toilet said...

"motherfuckers act like they done forgot about Errol "Pumpkin" Bedward?" REAL TALK.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

The 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.

Anonymous said...

This true...Pumpkin was beyond his time

Unknown said...

Facts....Pumpkin is hip hops first Super Producer..not Larry