Sunday Music: "Unassisted" by Rasco

Patterns are just repeating variables you happen to notice. Finding one nobody else has found before can be worth a lot. Harnessing one - whether for profit or for fun, can change lives - mine included. I've been thinking about this all week, and I want you to think about it too.

I started because Lawrence Yeo brought up Flying Lotus and Gaslamp Killer and Planet Asia on Just Press Record and that sent me down a west coast rabbithole.

I was playing my Alchemist and Dilated and other stuff. I was listening to Dilla and thinking about his influences. And then I started to notice what wasn’t there or on streaming.

Which, YouTube, it really is undefeated sometimes.

I must have put “Unassisted” by Rasco on so many mix CDs in the early 2000s. Part boom-bap, part pure rapping over a break energy, it’s just perfection. Shoutout to Fanatik (and Peanut Butter Wolf) for making it happen, even if streaming it was a challenge.

My favorite part about it is how simple both the beat and the rhyme scheme is. It’s not simple in a simplistic or childish way either. It’s simple in its comfort for what it is. The beat fits the words like a glove and vice versa. It’s profoundly streamlined execution.

Lawrence (and Bill Stephney) both talked about the magic of collage. DJ and sample culture originally got (incorrectly) labeled as ways to rip off recorded licenses and rights holders. That’s capitalism for you. It’s also a load of crap.

The culture is about collage. New things are being created. Take this song and what’s assisting it.

The drum and guitar samples come from Joe Farrell's 1974 track “Upon this Rock.” It’s a great song, and it does its 1974 thing perfectly.

But why should Farrell’s song only get one good turn out of it? Especially if somebody doesn’t have a cool spin to put on it?

Rasco and crew heard something else in those patterns - they heard how they could carry different weight, different meaning. That's the unassisted part. The samples are the assist across time, but what Rasco does with them? That's pure pattern recognition happening in real time.

Listen to this and tell me it’s not a fully new song:

Music is patterns. Patterns, are just repeating variables. The variables can be anything. They can be poetry. They can be a sequence on a soccer pitch.

What makes Jordan or Messi or Caitlin Clark the best at their crafts? The way they see patterns. Everybody else knows them and finds variations too, in the exact same games, but what these people do in real time is something special. It’s something new.

The act of creativity is the act of capturing a pattern that locks up with your own brain.

The external reality is the assist. But the internal connection is unassisted. Your pattern matching is your algorithm and nobody else’s. That’s what makes sampling art instead of theft.

Think about the sports example too. Is a step over or crossover or dunk different on its own? No - but what’s done with it, in sequence, in real time - special pattern makers weave special memories into observers’ lives.

Bespoke pattern matching becomes every creator’s fingerprint. Because the best creators aren't trying to make something from nothing - they're learning to hear the patterns that others miss, then having the audacity to act on what they find. Unassisted.

The future isn’t made of old stuff - never has been, never will be - so keep pushing the boundaries on what else we can do with what you’ve got.

I love being reminded of old songs and getting fired up about them all over again.

Thanks Lawrence for the reminder to dig for this stuff.

ps. I have to get my wife to a Gaslamp Killer set. I went looking for when I saw him open for RTJ circa 2017 and found a couple decent clips of what seems to be a similar set. Jump to the video game/8-bit segment if nothing else starting around 16ish minutes. This is how you mine your own experience for new patterns (magic):

Pss. The conversation that inspired this post is here: