Like you didn’t see this one coming from a mile away!!!

So what we have here is an obvious classic, not only in terms of this being a breakthrough for Dee-Lite, but also for rapper Q-Tip, just beginning to embark on his long career both as a solo rapper and with A Tribe Called Quest. Still getting full rotation on the radio and in the club today (even via tons of bastardized baltimore club remixes), this tune hasn’t aged a bit! It’s only fitting I post this classic this week, as I just spotted a nice gem on ebay the other day: Dee-Lite front man DJ Dimitri’s Roland TR-909 drum machine! Not only has he been the sole owner of this timeless piece of kit for almost two decades, but it’s also a professionally modded 909, with extra sets of knobs on the sides to give greater amounts of control to the claps, snares and hats. There’s more flexibility now built in for the kick and snare CV outs, so you can use this thing to sidechain it’s output with pretty much anything you want! A very nice find, the auction ends in 2 days, and trust me, it ain’t gonna sell for cheap.

Ebay listing of DJ Dimitri’s Roland 909

To have any other song featured on this Thursday would just be sacriligous. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

This one is a techno classic, folks. Orbital was synonymous with the sound and progression of dance music in the early 1990s. All of the familiar elements of a song from that time, especially the relentless acid tb-303 lead, are here in all of their old school glory. After a hiatus of a few years, the duo of producers that comprised Orbital reunited and have been performing a string of concerts in Europe. They have been utilizing Ableton pretty heavily in their new setup, both for mashing up classics such as this, along with brand new ad-libbed material to keep each show unique. It’s great to see them utilizing Live in parallel with their classic rack of vintage Roland gear as well. Hopefully they will travel out to the states in time!

Anyone who has been a longtime listener of hip-hop or any breakbeat-oriented form of music should recognize this song right away! And if you don’t, well, I can pretty much guarantee you have heard the opening bar before. Easily one of the most sampled drum breaks EVER, it’s been used in literally thousands of hip hop, pop, and dance tracks over the past 30 years.

The Incredible Bongo Band was a loosely organized group of session musicians signed to MGM, under the leadership of Michael Viner. They created instrumental tracks at varying tempos which were used to supplement movies and TV spots in the early 1970s. This project only lasted a couple years and remained very obscure until DJ’s like Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash discovered Apache. They would routinely play two copies of opening break on two turntables to “extend” it, much to the enjoyment of dancers and breakers during all their sets. Subsequentally, this track became a building block in hip hop culture and remains one of the most sampled pieces of music of all time!