Tony Greer and Jared Dillian asked me to come on their MacroDirt (finance) podcast as a Culture Consultant of sorts and, before I say anything else, I’m kinda digging that billing. I might start telling other people it’s one of the things I do. Partly because I do, and also because I think it would get a “what’s that?” or “I need that” pretty quickly from anybody remotely interested. Very interesting. Anyway.
Tony and Jared have been covering the Year-End Billboard charts alongside their climbing episode numbers for a while now (i.e. episode 92 meant they did a bonus segment about the Billboard 100 from 1992) and I’ve been spamming them with messages they’ve been inspiring. Did I brow beat them into inviting me on because it would be easier than responding to replies? I’ll let you be the judge.
We talked about 1996. We didn’t talk enough about Jared’s waxed with snaps shirt (but credit to Tony for shouting it out). BUT in ‘96, Tony was trading and living a Wall St. life, Jared was coming out of the Coast Guard, and I was in high school trying to suppress my love for the charts while proactively looking underground.
We talked “Macarena” and I told them the story of the song because it’s one of my favorites. How the song took years to become a hit, has a filthy or at least immoral translation (not to mention, why’d he name the girl after his daughter, especially since the girl cheats on her soldier boyfriend with at least two guys?), and the mindless magic it psychologically represented in the era.
We talked about Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, too. Mostly because I still think they’re one of the greatest hustle stories ever. Cleveland to world famous after some failed one-way bus ticket purchases, the person who signed their first deal dying (Eazy-E), and still having the gumption to see their shot all the way through.
But most of all, looking at the chart, there was D’Angelo.
I’ve done the D’Angelo listening guide and you can find that here. When I say the man (and those around him) changed my life in the 90s, it’s not an exaggeration. I think I noticed him on the list when I was scrolling it before we recorded, but in the moment, seeing his name and Aaliyah at 69 and 70, sandwiched between No Doubt and John Cougar Mellencamp, and barely edging out “Pony” by Ginuwine (respect), I needed to take an extra beat with this.
I loved blues. I loved rock. I loved punk rock and metal and yeah, I had a soft spot for a mix of rap, even if I was feeling pretty turned-off by the rap that was dominating the charts in this period. I was obsessed with the idea of “where’s my 1977” aka the year that punk broke because - I didn’t need an old moment, I was searching for my now musical moment.
1996 was one of the first. I’ve had several. That’s another post.
I had spent the prior several years talking to people about wishing they’d grown up when all sorts of different great things had happened. I was always distracted by how many of those periods there were. Yeah, I’d love to see Chuck Berry or Little Richard, or be in the middle of the big band era with Duke and Count Basie, and the small band era with Bird and Miles, and in the 60s with Hendrix and the Stones and the Beatles.
It seemed to me that if all those moments had so much great art, then this moment surely does, too. But where was it? And grunge was a thing. I had experienced enough of it even if I wasn’t old enough to be hanging out in and around it. That was the soundtrack to my life, in so many ways, but what was next? What came after the alt-rock explosion and, as much as I appreciated Dishwalla, it wasn’t Dishwalla, right? Right?!
D’Angelo came on. I’m assuming it was MTV but mostly because I don’t think any of my friends said “Matt, you have to hear this.” Within another year I’d be playing in a cover band and my obsession would be confirmed by older, wiser nerds. But there this guy was on MTV, doing soul and R&B, with hip hop sensibilities, and all sorts of things about his approach that should have been off but weren’t.
Not bad off. Unique off. He was doing something new. I wasn’t having a revelation. I was just having a more publicly anware experience of what New Yorkers hanging out at CBGBs in the ‘70s were small-scale experiencing via a local scene to prove it.
On the album cuts, D’Angelo was doing what was about to start getting called neo-soul. It’s a dumb name. I understand the framing. You got the soulful vocals, plus he had chops on the keys, and the charming croon meets church boy bellow put him in a camp of his own. It was neo. Just more Neo from the Matrix, in my opinion.
Because it was already and always about what he was doing with time. And harmony and melody too, but together, in time, that made it so infectious.
Listen to “Lady”. Listen to how far his vocals are leaning back against the beat. This is the song that was on the charts remember. We have to start here. I always loved the stepping up of the melody (sing the “your - my - layyydeee” and you’ll feel it), contrasted by the immediate stepping off/out in the chord and bass underneath the arrival on the downbeat. This is textbook cool stuff. In execution and composition. Brilliant.
So that was on the charts. Deservedly so. And, let me give you a live version too, just so you can understand the musicianship outside of the studio for a song like this. D’Angelo was a breath of not just fresh, but new air to a genre that sort of didn’t know what to do with itself post Michael Jackson’s peak and hip-hop’s competing rise.
Live you get a better context for the neo-soul label that would haunt him. This simultaneously could and can’t be from a live Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield or - take your pick - recording. The guy could sing and his players could play (play on, play on):
With all these cool points came the collaboration requests. People started to realize just how much extra room and play D’Angelo was able to work with. One of the first to jump on a remix was DJ Premier. Maybe it was the Mary J understanding of what R&B could do. Maybe it was just he’s Premier and has spent so much time listening to music that his ear for experimentation was not unlike the early movers on punk in ‘77.
And, before you listen, the video is extremely important here. There’s a pure, sonic element. There’s the rhythmic elements, too, which becomes the whole draw in the years to follow but go to that retrospective listening guide post I mentioned before for that. Watch the visual representation of all this, including the features in the video with him. D’Angelo was the complete package.
The drums boom and bap like you’d expect, but those accent punches - WTF, right? And the space Prem gives for his vocal, you just don’t hear the backup vocals the same until you’ve heard this remix (and watched him cuddle up, look like the coolest guy you ever saw on all fronts in the video I very much remember from TV in the era).
DJ Premier even did a So Wassup? episode on the making of the remix. I think it’s one of the best episodes of the show. Mostly because you get the context of what was going on at the label when they met. The newness of the sounds. The response from both the men and the women in the audience. It was a different type of crossover, a niche within a niche.
Holding up the floppy disk never gets old to me. It’s so cool. So Premier takes the session mix, on 10lb 2-inch reels, reduces it to the groove and “it only had a clap anyway” - “and a kick” - but the rest is history. He kept the groove and created all of that space. It was steady percussive “stab” ridden against the lean of the vocals. Throw the AZ feature on and it’s a wrap.
Premier also touches on the video in the clip, you want to hear him break down the features. It makes me smile. I feel his regret in not being there, immortalized against the white backdrop , somewhere near D and the Rhodes, especially when AZ drops the shoutout.
‘96 was my first conscious ‘77. I felt the world change. I felt people not getting it the way I was getting it in the moment. I felt the “I wish I could do that” next to the “Can I do that” on top of the “There is no way I could ever be that cool” feels.
I felt it because the musical world was doing the thing music always does. It was shifting. It was changing and evolving, and people were taking it in new directions. Yes, post-grunge rock got boring and “Macarena” dominated every social function. But, just beneath the surface, there was a party going on, and this one is still having an impact on new music today.
ps. Thanks to Jared and Tony for winding me up for this one. See our talk here:
