Since the birth of Hip Hop Culture in the mid '70's, cats have been searching for the best breaks...The perfect beat for spinning, rhyming, b-boying, and getting up. Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force made this sentiment famous with their song of the same title (Looking for the Perfect Beat). You may remember the group performing at the Roxy in the film Beat Street when Double K and Ramon walked into the club. S.O. to the Beat Street Breakers (NYC Breakers) & the Bronx Rockers (Rock Steady Crew).
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This reoccurring post will highlight what I consider to be a 'perfect beat' and the original sample it was based off of from a myriad of genres. I also would like to post songs that the readers would like to hear. I'd like to start this joint off with something I was listening to the other day: Diamond D's I went for Mine. This is a track off the Stunts Blunts and Hip Hop LP released in the fall of 1992. 26 years ago, Hip Hop was sounding like this..."my Name is Diamond, yep you guessed it"...
Other artists later sampled this track for their own works, most notably Busta Rhymes (2nd from the right, with his old school crew Leaders of the New School. click here for Vevo video), but Diamond's credited with using it first. To me, the way he used the horn break from the song as the chorus/outro, was simple but brilliant. A lot of cats from that era would've used a different song to make the chorus, or they would've sampled some horns from a different track. His simplicity in taking most of his samples from the same song also made it sound better because all the instrumentation was sequenced in the same key. Personal analysis aside, the track is banging!
So what's the track it's based off of right? The original song used by Diamond for I Went for Mine is called Faded Lady by a Disco Soul group named S.S.O. (Soul Sensation Orchetra). It's on their Disco Soul Roots LP released in 1977 on the EMI & RKM imprint. Douglas Lucas and the Sugar Sisters may have done vocal work on the track. There's no US release of this LP. I believe the band's home country is Belgium. If someone knows more info about S.S.O., leave it in the comments. Don't hesitate to add-on with songs you consider to have 'the perfect beat'...
Peace
Peace